Maven Capsule

Maven Capsule is a caplet that allows the creations of capsules that, instead of embedding their dependencies, download all or some of them from a Maven repository. The dependencies are downloaded, cached locally, and shared among other capsules that also depend on them. In addition, this caplet allows specifying capsule metadata in a POM file in addition to the manifest.

A capsule with the Maven caplet that has all (or almost all) of its dependencies downloaded rather than embedded is known as a "thin" capsule (as opposed to a "fat" capsule, which embeds all of its dependencies). In fact, a capsule may not contain any of the application's classes/JARs at all. Instead, the capsule's manifest may contain these attributes alone (and no files in the capsule JAR besides the manifest):

Main-Class: Capsule
Caplets: MavenCapsule
Application: com.acme:foo

And when the capsule is launched, the newest available version of the application will be downloaded, cached and launched. In this use-case, the capsule JAR looks like this:

foo.jar
|__ Capsule.class
|__ MavenCapsule.class
|__ capsule/
|    \__ [Maven capsule classes]
\__ MANIFEST/
    \__ MANIFEST.MF

Note how none of the application's classes are actually found in the JAR.

The empty Maven capsule ( (i.e., it's manifest has no Application-Class, Application, Application-Name etc.) even lets you launch any capsule or executable JAR stored in a Maven repository like so:

    java -jar capsule.jar com.acme:fooapp

Applying the Maven Caplet

1. Embed all the Maven capsule files in your JAR (using your build tool).

2. Add MavenCapsule to the Caplets manifest attribute.

Performance Impact

The Maven caplet's classes add an extra 1.5MB to the capsule (but hopefully save more by not embedding dependencies). Once the artifacts have been downloaded and cached, resolving them against the local cache adds about 0.5 seconds to the startup time.

POM Support

This caplet allows specifying capsule metadata in a POM file (in addition to that in the manifest). The POM file must be named pom.xml and placed in the capsule's root.

If the Application-ID and Application-Version attributes are not defined, these, too, will be obtained from the POM file (with the ID being <group>.<artifact>, and the version being the version in the POM).

If the Dependencies manifest attribute is not defined, those non-optional dependencies declared in the POM file are treated as though they were listed in the Dependencies attribute.

Maven Dependencies

The Maven caplet changes the artifact resolution strategy of the capsule, such that artifacts that are not embedded in the capsule will be downloaded from a Maven repository. This works for any attribute that can specify artifact coordinates, including (but not limited to) Application, Dependencies, Native-Dependencies, Java-Agents, and even Caplets.

By default, the caplet will look for dependencies on Maven Central. If other repositories are needed (or if you don't want to access Maven Central), the Repositories attribute is a space-separated list of Maven repositories formatted as URL or NAME(URL). The repositories will be searched in the order they are listed. If the Repositories attribute is found in the manifest, then Maven Central will not be searched.

Instead of specifying explicit URLs, the following well-known repository names can be listed in the Repositories attribute:

• central - Maven central, HTTPS
• central-http - Maven central, HTTP
• jcenter - jCenter, HTTPS
• jcenter-http - jCenter, HTTP
• local - Default local Maven repository (userdir/.m2/repository). You should only use local repositories in tests.

The caplet also automatically uses the information in Maven's settings.xml file to access repositories that require authentication. The settings.xml used is the user's settings (in the .m2 directory in the user's home directory), or in the global settings (in the conf subdirectory of the Maven installation). A settings.xml file is absolutely not required for the Maven caplet's operation, and is mostly useful when accessing private organizational Maven repositories for dependencies.

Unlike the default capsule, the Maven caplet also pulls transitive dependencies. Exclusions can be given as a comma separated list within parentheses, immediately following the main artifact, of groupId:artifactId coordinates, where the artifact can be the wildcard *. For example:

Dependencies : com.esotericsoftware.kryo:kryo:2.23.0(org.ow2.asm:*)

The CAPSULE_REPOS environment variable can be set to a comma- (,) or a whitespace-separated list of Maven repository URLS or well-known repository names (see above), which will be prepended to those specified in the manifest or the POM.

By default, SNAPSHOT dependencies are not allowed, unless the Allow-Snapshots is set to true.

Maven version ranges (as well as LATEST and RELEASE) are supported. For example: Application: com.acme:foo:[1.0,2.0). The newest version matching the range (or the newest version if no range is given), will be downloaded, cached and launched. Not specifying a version at all will resolve to the latest release. If the application's main artifact is a capsule, then all configurations will be taken based on those in the artifact capsule.

Dependency Caching

Maven artifacts are downloaded the first time the capsule is launched, and placed in the deps subdirectory of the Capsule cache, where they are shared among all capsules using the Maven caplet.

Miscellany

Adding -Dcapsule.reset=true, can force a re-download of SNAPSHOT versions.

-Dcapsule.resolve will download all dependencies (those that are not cached yet) without launching the capsule.

The command: java -Dcapsule.tree -jar app.jar, will print the dependency tree for the capsule, and then quit without launching the app.

Two more system properties affect the way Capsule searches for dependencies. If capsule.offline is defined or set to true (-Dcapsule.offline or -Dcapsule.offline=true), Capsule will not attempt to contact online repositories for dependencies (instead, it will use the local Maven repository/cache only). capsule.local determines the path for the local Maven repository/cache Capsule will use (which, by default, is the deps subdirectory of the Capsule cache).

Build Tool Utilities

The Dependencies class contains utility methods that used by build-tool plugins that create capsules.

Reference

Manifest Attributes

• Repositories: a list of Maven repositories formatted as URL or NAME(URL)
• Allow-Snapshots: If true, allows for SNAPSHOT dependencies (default: false)

Actions

Actions are system properties that, if defined, perform an action other than launching the application.

• capsule.tree: if set, the capsule will print the app's dependency tree, and then quit without launching the app
• capsule.resolve: all external dependencies, if any, will be downloaded (if not cached already), and/or the capsule will be extracted if necessary, but the application will not be launched

System Properties

• capsule.reset: if set, forces re-extraction of the capsule, where applies, and/or re-downloading of SNAPSHOT dependencies
• capsule.offline: if defined (without a value) or set to true, Capsule will not attempt to contact online repositories for dependencies
• capsule.local: the path for the local Maven repository; defaults to CAPSULE_CACHE/deps
• capsule.connect.timeout: The maximum amount of time (in milliseconds) to wait for a successful connection to a remote repository. Non-positive values indicate no timeout.
• capsule.request.timeout: The maximum amount of time (in milliseconds) to wait for remaining data to arrive from a remote repository. Note that this timeout does not restrict the overall duration of a request, it only restricts the duration of inactivity between consecutive data packets. Non-positive values indicate no timeout.

Environment Variables

• CAPSULE_REPOS: sets the list -- comma (,) or whitespace separated -- of Maven repositories that the capsule will use; overrides those specified in the manifest or the POM.
• CAPSULE_CONNECT_TIMEOUT: The maximum amount of time (in milliseconds) to wait for a successful connection to a remote repository. Non-positive values indicate no timeout.
• CAPSULE_REQUEST_TIMEOUT: The maximum amount of time (in milliseconds) to wait for remaining data to arrive from a remote repository. Note that this timeout does not restrict the overall duration of a request, it only restricts the duration of inactivity between consecutive data packets. Non-positive values indicate no timeout.