If you use Maven you probably already know that Sun jars were always a problem because their license didn’t allow redistribution. Now with the effort from the Glassfish project Sun is releasing a lot of components under the open source CDDL license. It allows the redistribution so we have started syncing the Maven repository at Java.net managed by the Sun guys, for now only the com.sun.* and javax.* groups and only the official releases.
Author Archives: Carlos Sanchez
Maestro and Better Builds With Maven Book 1.0.1
Today is release day, two things are out, a new version of the Better Builds with Maven book with the errata found to date fixed, and Maestro, open source end-to-end build solution based upon Apache Maven and Continuum that’s
easy to use, fast, and pre-configured for use with a high performance
repository, with commercial support available from Mergere. And yes, both the book and Maestro are free (as in free beer).
Announcements follow for more detail:
Mergere is pleased to announce the release of Better Builds with Maven 1.0.1, the How-to Guide for Apache Maven.
The book covers:
- An introduction to Maven 2.0
- Building applications with Maven
- Creating J2EE builds
- Plugin authoring
- Monitoring source code, testing, dependencies and releases
- Leveraging repositories and continuous integration in a team environment
- Converting existing Ant builds to Maven
This latest release corrects all errata found to date. Thanks to everyone that has contributed feedback since the initial release!
Better Builds with Maven is available free of charge (after registering) from http://library.mergere.com/.
Mergere is pleased to announce the release of Maestro 1.0.1, an end-to-end build solution based upon Apache Maven and Continuum that’s easy to use, fast, and pre-configured for use with a high performance repository.
Maestro includes:
- the Maestro Project Server for managing automated builds, project artifacts and developer sites
- the Maestro Developer Client for building Maven projects
- auto-configuration of developer settings from a common Project Server
- an automated installer for Windows, Mac and Linux systems
- comprehensive bundled documentation
- the book “Better Builds with Maven” (v1.0.1, also available as a separate download)
- Source code, licensed under the Apache License 2.0
Maestro is free to download and use (after registering) from http://www.mergere.com/products_developers.jsp.
There is no need to re-register if you have previously downloaded from Mergere.
Support is also available from Mergere. For more information, see http://www.mergere.com/services_core.jsp.
Running of the bulls – San Fermin
One of the more well know things about Spain in the rest of the world is the running of the bulls in Pamplona which is happening during these days. Too bad that people without training or drunk, foreigners mostly, get every year badly injured or dead.
Definitely something you must check out once in your live.
Maven Day – Paris
If you happen to be in Paris the 11th, from 8:30 to 12:30 there’s a free conference, Maven Day, with three core developers from Maven, Jason van Zyl, Vincent Massol and Emmanuel Venisse.
74/80 rue Roque de Fillol
Puteaux
Mo La D�fense – Esplanade
There’s a page where you can find more Maven events.
Acegi Security 1.0.1 released
As Ben Alex is travelling around Europe (lucky you!) I had the task of releasing the bug fix release 1.0.1, as many people were waiting for SEC-281, due to Acegi 1.0.0 requiring Spring 2.x and breaking under 1.2.x.
One of the differencies with previous releases is that this one does not provide signed jars, instead PGP signatures have been provided.
Check the detailed changelog. This release is a drop in replacement, so no upgrade steps are required.
It won’t be available through the normal Sourceforge download page (for now), the preferred method is through the Maven repository which contains the jars, javadocs and sources, with corresponding signatures.
The Acegi repository is mirrored to the central ibiblio repository, so you don’t need any extra configuration in your project.
You can still get the binary zip distribution and sources.
The Acegi web site provides additional information on Acegi Security’s features and access to online documentation.
And now back to the World Cup and the Formula 1 race 😉
Spring and Maven relationship
Many of the Maven and Spring users out there have complained for looooong time about not having the latest Spring releases in the Maven repository at iBiblio, something that I personally solved every time there was a new release of Spring copying the jars in the repo, ensuring also that they are the official releases as it’s something used for a lot of people.
Then with Maven 2 the problem started to be the poms not being there, so as I like Spring I came with a parallel Maven 2 build that could be added to Spring CVS so we could build it with Maven 2 and thus having the right poms for Spring users. You can find this conversion in the Better Builds with Maven book, Ant to Maven migration chapter. The problem is that as new features are added into Spring, dependencies are updated,… things get out of sync pretty fast. So I kindly requested the Spring guys to add the poms to their CVS (as both Ant and Maven build can coexist) and let the community help improve them. The jira issue is SPR-1484, you can find there the latest poms i’ve been working with, and at spring/lib/readme.txt you can get the versions of dependencies used (although docs are not always up to date). If you want Spring to support the Maven 2 poms and make sure they are always up to date in sync with the releases you can vote for the issue SPR-1484.
Remember that we have now more than 11000 jars in the repo + more than 1500 project sources + more than 700 javadocs! keep doing this great job submitting them!
De vuelta en España
Volví esta semana a Coruña, después de bastante tiempo fuera de España. Las cosas no parecen haber cambiado demasiado, un poco de fresquillo después de los días calurosos que me contaron del fin de semana.
Aparte de eso, me he dado cuenta de que conozco más gente en este negocio (informática, open source, java,…) fuera de España que aquí, lo que es un poco triste. No hay demasiada innovación, yo diría que un montón de política en el medio en vez de razones técnicas. También hay gente que cree que pueden hacer las cosas mejor e intentan inventar la rueda.
Algunas de las cosas que leo en español son
- Javahispano, con las noticias en el mundo Java. Por desgracia creo que un gran porcentaje son simplemente traducciones de noticias que se pueden encontrar antes en inglés, con lo que pierden bastante interés. Si tuviera más tiempo me gustaría echarles una mano, por lo menos de las noticias sobre Maven me entero rápido
. - Rogelio Bernal de eListas, eGrupos y ZoomBlog. Otro que se ha tenido que ir a hacer las Américas y vive en el Silicon Valley. Parece un tío majo que se lo curró, tenía que haberle hecho una visita cuando estuve por allí. La próxima vez será.
- Eduardo Pelegri de Sun y su Acuario sobre Glassfish. También por el Silicon Valley. Lo conocí en persona en JavaOne y está intentando posicionar Glassfish como una alternativa a los otros servidores de aplicaciones open source y creo que va en muy buen camino.
- Martin Varsavsky, fundador de Jazztel, Ya.com, y ahora con FON. Al principio interesante para ver cómo estuvo formando la empresa, consiguiendo capital, partners, etc. cada vez se hace más aburrido porque te suelta el rollo publicitario FON en cada entrada. Y que si mi avión privado por aquí, que si mi cena con Clinton por allá,…
Otro día con más tiempo pondré algunos más.
Juan Valdez

I’m pretty sure everybody knows who Juan Valdez is, the character that represents the cafeteros from Colombia.
What I didn’t know was that his real name is Carlos Sanchez ;), something I found out while reading that he’s about to retire. What a coincidence! I’m sure the jokes around me will last some time.
Post-Javaone II – podcasting
Back from JavaOne I realised that have some pretty funny media. I’ll start a series of podcasts, starting with Rich (no names for protect 😉 ), about him around 20 years ago when he went to Spain for university and tried to ask his roommates for drawers to put his stuff. Listen to Rich in Spain. The quality of the sound is not too good as we were in a bar (as all nights).
Post-JavaOne
It was a very nice week in San Francisco. It was not due to the sessions because I didn’t went to any 😉 but it was really interesting meeting people, some already well known from mailings and new ones.
From the second group it was really good to see how more and more people use Maven, and those that still don’t use it know a lot about it. The reasons not to use it also moved from other years from “my build is fine with ant” or “I don’t like the standards that Maven imposes” to “it’s something we want to do but still didn’t have the time”. The good news is that now Mergere is offering Maestro, a user friendly bundle with Maven, Continuum, a sample application, with user documentation, the “Better Builds with Maven” book, a nice installer and using a faster repository, which many people would appreciate, as the fact that everything is completely free and open source (which is not always the same).
From the first group aka “the usual suspects”, I’d like to point out that after some drinks geeks start being more talkative ;). The ones that deserve special mention for their abilities with the glass are Rob Harrop (Spring), Gregor Hohpe (Google), Dan Diephouse (XFire) aka seXFire, Hani (The Bile Blog), and the ever present David Blevins (Geronimo), Dain Sundstrom (Geronimo) , James Strachan (LogicBlaze), Hiram Chirino (LogicBlaze),… I’m sure I forget people but I have an excuse… I was trying to keep up with them!
Also wednesday I went to see the Champions Leage final, playing Barcelona-Arsenal. It was a lot of fun watching it with the guys as I was the only spaniard around against a bunch of britons, but of course at the end we won 2-1. A really good game.

