Process spawned by exec-maven-plugin blocks the maven process
- by Arnab Biswas
I am trying to execute the following scenario using maven :
pre-integration-phase : Start a java based application using a main class (using exec-maven-plugin)
integration-phase : Run the integration test cases (using maven-failsafe-plugin)
post-integration-phase: Stop the application gracefully (using exec-maven-plugin)
Here is pom.xml snip:
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.2.1</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>launch-myApp</id>
<phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
<goals>
<goal>exec</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<executable>java</executable>
<arguments>
<argument>-DMY_APP_HOME=/usr/home/target/local</argument>
<argument>-Djava.library.path=/usr/home/other/lib</argument>
<argument>-classpath</argument>
<classpath/>
<argument>com.foo.MyApp</argument>
</arguments>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.12</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>integration-test</goal>
<goal>verify</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<forkMode>always</forkMode>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
If I execute mvn post-integration-test, my application is getting started as a child process of the maven process, but the application process is blocking the maven process from executing the integration tests which comes in the next phase. Later I found that there is a bug (or missing functionality?) in maven exec plugin, because of which the application process blocks the maven process. To address this issue, I have encapsulated the invocation of MyApp.java in a shell script and then appended “/dev/null 2&1 &” to spawn a separate background process. Here is the snip (this is just a snip and not the actual one) from runTest.sh:
java - DMY_APP_HOME =$2 com.foo.MyApp > /dev/null 2>&1 &
Although this solves my issue, is there any other way to do it? Am I missing any argument for exec-maven-plugin?
