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New Tool Suite for Maven-Centric Java Development Released

• By John K. Waters
• December 1, 2010

New Tool Suite for Maven-Centric Java Development Released

The leading commercial supporter of the open-source Maven project today released an integrated development suite for Maven-centric Java development.

The new Sonatype Professional bundles several popular open source technologies into a single environment, including Apache Maven, for build management; Nexus Professional, for enterprise repository management; Hudson, for continuous integration; and m2eclipse, for visual management of Maven.

"This is an integrated suite of tools that developers are most likely to use together," said Larry Roshfeld, executive vice president of products at Sonatype. "And we're backing it with support, so that they can avoid the complexity of the roll-your-own type of situation that's often a part of using open source components."

Sponsored and licensed by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), Maven is an open-source framework and repository for building and managing any Java-based project. It started as an effort to simplify the build processes in the Jakarta Turbine project (a servlet based framework that helps Java developers quickly build Web applications). Based on the concept of a project object model (POM), Maven can manage a project's build, reporting, and documentation from a central piece of information. The project's goal today is to allow developers to comprehend the complete state of a development project in the shortest period of time. Sonatype is Maven's chief commercial sponsor.

Hudson is a popular open-source, Java-based continuous integration server. Nexus Professional is Sonatype's repository manager. And m2eclipse is a plug-in developed by Sonatype for managing Maven through the Eclipse IDE.

"We built this from the ground up to make the developer more efficient," Roshfeld added. "So everything is very tightly integrated with Eclipse. The developer doesn't need to worry any longer about context switching to manage Maven, the browse and search their repositories, or to manage continuous integration jobs. All of that is exposed directly within the IDE."

One of the most interesting features of the tool suite is a "developer onboarding functionality," which Roshfeld said speeds the process of getting teams productive on new projects. "One of the things we hear consistently from enterprise developers and project managers is that it takes a really long time get developers up to speed on new projects. They had to set up Eclipse, their work space, all the plugins they need, their source trees, their continuous integration jobs. This new functionality allows a team leader to compose exactly what he or she wants their team to use, to send a link around to everyone on the team, and when the developer clicks that link it materializes the entire work environment for them."

This feature makes it easy to reinstantiate particular development environments in the future, he added, making it easier to fix problems a year or two down the road.

The new tool suite is also integrated with Maven Central, a popular resource for the exchange of Java artifacts. Each month Maven Central receives nearly 300 million hits from more than 41,000 organizations, Roshfeld said.

More information Sonatype Professional is available here.