Tag Archives: documentation

Retrieving a plugin's documentation


December 13, 2010 By Anders Hammar

One of the key things driving the adoption of Maven, is the rich set of plugins available. Whenever you want to add some functionality to the build process, or possibly even just want to do a one-time job, chances are that there is already a plugin for that.

When you want to use Maven plugins, you need to get more information about them to know how to use them. Most often, there is online documentation that describes the goals and parameters. However, sometimes no such documentation exists or you just cannot find it. Also, the online documentation very often describes the latest version of the plugin – but what if you have to use an older version?

This blog post will explain the different options you have to retrieve information about a plugin, just by using Maven itself.

Continue reading →

Documenting the Nexus REST API with Enunciate


February 8, 2010 By Tamas Cservenak

Nexus OSS Core has more than 120 REST Resources published. And that number is just increasing with new Nexus Plugins. Not to mention Nexus Pro that comes with even more plugins and more REST resources.    Everything you do in Nexus, whether you use the Maven Nexus plugin or the Nexus UI, is interacting with a REST service that is available to you if you want to write your own customizations and scripts.   It has been this way since we started the project in 2007.  In this post, I’m going to discuss how this came to be, how Nexus was developed with REST in mind from the beginning.

Nexus: A Core of REST Services

When we started the Nexus project, I called it a “blind” application.  A “blind” webapp is one with no UI technology whatsoever built-in.   All it publishes is a few static files, and a REST API.   All of the UI that you see in Nexus is Javascript.   Your browser executes Javascript which, in turn, interacts with a set of services.   The only presentation technology on the server side is a trivial Velocity template used to render the initial “shell” of the page. Continue reading →

Why Putting Repositories in your POMs is a Bad Idea


February 25, 2009 By Brian Fox

I get this question frequently so it is time to write down my thoughts on the answer so I can stop repeating myself. Here’s the question:

Should I put the urls to my repositories in my poms or in my settings?

The short answer is: settings.

The long answer is: it depends.

There are two scenarios to consider here. Enterprise software (generally not published externally) and public software. Lets take Enterprise software first. Continue reading this post for a full explanation of both scenarios. Continue reading →

Galoppini Covers Sonatype's Open Documentation


February 23, 2009 By Tim O'Brien

Roberto Galoppini just published a brief interview with Mark de Visser this morning which covers Sonatype’s open documentation efforts. As someone who has been involved with Sonatype’s open book efforts along with Jason, Brian, John, Jason, Bruce, and our other contributing authors it is interesting to see the traffic and interest that is generated by something as simple as free documentation. I’ve long been a big believer that books about open source software should be as free as the software itself, and I’m also convinced that solid documentation is a necessary foundation for a vibrant open-source community. Without a good “free” book, it is nearly impossible for an open source project to grow a community. Continue reading →

We're Taking Requests


February 2, 2009 By Tim O'Brien

Are you having problems with a particularly crazy Maven build?  Is there a part of Maven that you just don’t have a handle on, even after reading and rereading The Definitive Guide or the Apache Maven site?    We’re here to support the community, and Sonatype is serious about helping to invest in the foundational, open-source documentation that will help the community around Maven grow and evolve.    I’m biased because I focus on documentation, but I’ve always thought that good documentation makes the difference between open source projects that evolve over time and open source projects that fade into obscurity.   The docs are the interface to the community, and as widespread as Maven is, there are still people adopting the tool and learning from step 1.    If you have any requests for documentation, we’d encourage you to let us know.

  1. Get Satisfaction, if you have a request for documentation let us know through our Get Satisfaction page.
  2. If you have a request for a video, create an account at Vimeo and make a request via our Vimeo Profile.
  3. Send a message to book@sonatype.com

We encourage you to make the request via a public channel such as Get Satisfaction or Vimeo because it will provide the best community feedback and accountability.   Get Satisfaction is an interesting customer service experiment, it isn’t merely a company-driven customer service site, it is an experiment in transparent and accountable customer-driven service.   When you ask us a question on Get Satisfaction, the questions and answers are visible to everyone.   If you have an idea for documentation, please feel free to share it with us. We’re taking requests.