News

MyEclipse Mixes in More Maven

• By John K. Waters
• September 30, 2008

Java developers who have been weighing the pros and cons of the Maven open-source build management system have a new reason to give it a try. Genuitec has implemented Maven2 in the latest milestone release of its MyEclipse integrated development environment (IDE).

Maven is the increasingly popular plug-in-based build management system evolving under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. It's based on the project object model (POM), which gathers project information into an XML file, including things like project dependencies, project goals and build profiles.

Maven is designed to allow developers to use the POM along with a set of shared plug-ins. Because the plug-ins are shared by all projects using Maven, they contribute to a uniform build system. As the Maven Web site puts it, "Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build…"

Genuitec bills MyEclipse as both a comprehensive Java EE IDE and a Web development tool suite. The Flower Mound, Texas-based company promotes the tool for developers using UML, JSP, XML, Struts, JSF and EJBs. It supports Ajax, Web Services development, Java Persistence, extended database support and application server integration, according to the company.

The 7.0 version of MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench comes with a full implementation of Maven 2 for Eclipse tools. It can be used in its native "raw" format or the fully integrated Maven4MyEclipse version, said Wayne Parrott, Genuitec's vice president of product development.

Maven4MyEclipse is an implementation of the Maven2 project designed to smooth out the notorious bumps associated with traditional Maven installations, said Genuitec President Maher Masri. It supports the execution of enterprise Maven2 build and project-management tasks, including project report generation from within MyEclipse. But it also allows developers to use the Maven command line tools.

"Most people think of Eclipse as a platform for development tools," Masri said. "We subscribe to the idea that Eclipse can be a framework for any kind of application."

The Milestone 2 release of the MyEclipse IDE also supports both UML1 and UML2, and includes updates of the MyEclipse ICEfaces tooling. Another open-source technology, ICEfaces is an Ajax framework aimed at Java EE developers building rich Internet applications (RIAs).

Genuitec was a founding member of the Eclipse Foundation and currently serves on its board of directors. The company is also a founding member and sponsor of Eclipse Plug-In Central, a resource for open-source and commercial Eclipse plug-ins. To date, the company claims more than a million users of its flagship MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench IDE.

"We bet on this technology early because we saw it as a framework for any kind of application," Masri said. "The tooling is just a stepping stone into what is becoming a very exciting market."

Masri said that at least 50 percent of Genuitec's employees -- including Masri himself -- work in one capacity or another on an Eclipse project or effort.

The general availability release of MyEclipse 7.0 is currently slated for mid-October, but a 30-day trial version of the milestone release is available now for download here.