Current trunk version of JBoss Tools can be built with maven 3 and make it faster and easier for everyone.

Prerequisites

1. Java 1.6 SDK
2. Maven 3.beta1
3. About  6 GB of free disk space if you want to run all integration tests for  (JBoss AS, Seam and Web Services Tools)
4. subversion client 1.6.X  (should work with lower version as well)

Environment Setup

Maven  and Java

Make sure your maven 3 is available by default and Java 1.6 is used.

 mvn -version

should  print out something like

Apache Maven 3.0-beta-2 (r983206; 2010-08-07 07:00:51-0400)
Java version: 1.6.0_18
Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "linux" version: "2.6.32.14-127.fc12.i686" arch: "i386" Family: "unix"

Sources

Checkout  sources from anonymous SVN like

 svn co http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbosstools/trunk jbosstools-trunk

This  will take some time dependent on your bandwidth

Build Strategies

Instructions below assume that commands are executed in jbosstools-src folder, in which all sources were previously checked out, as noted above.

There are several strategies to chose from: building everything, building individual component, building a set of components, building individual plugins or features. Depending on where you run Maven, you will aggregate/cascade down into more or less child builds.

But before you can do anything more complicated, you must first build the Target Platform and Parent Pom using this step:

 mvn clean install -f build/parent/pom.xml

Build/Test Everything

First, build the Target Platform and Parent Pom as noted above. Then, from the root of the checked out projects (eg., ~/jbosstools-src folder), you can build everything in one step, including running all tests, like this:

 mvn clean install

Or, if you want to just compile the modules (plugins, features, tests, update sites) without running tests, add the system property -Dmaven.test.skip=true.

 mvn clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true

Build/Test  A Particular Component and its Dependencies

For convenience there are bootstrap profiles projects defined for each component. This provides a simple way to build & test components along with all their dependencies.

 mvn clean install -f build/pom.xml -P${component.name}-bootstrap

where  ${component.name} is component you want to build/test. Check in build/pom.xml for the available components you can build this way.

Once bootstrapped, you can then rebuild just the component you care about using this:

 mvn clean install -f build/pom.xml -P${component.name}

If you prefer to do things iteratively (one component at a time) you can check the order to build in http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbosstools/trunk/pom.xml or http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbosstools/trunk/build/pom.xml

Build/Test Single Component or Module

If you have already bootstrapped a build by compiling all its dependencies (as in the previous section), you can now (re)build a whole component, or individual plugins/tests/features, using this:

 mvn clean install -f build/pom.xml -P${component.name}

where ${component.name} is component's root folder name. For instance to build jmx component:

 mvn clean install -f build/pom.xml -Pjmx

Or to build but skip running tests:

 mvn clean install -f build/pom.xml -Pjmx -Dmaven.test.skip=true

You can also build individual plugins or collections of plugins by simply running maven in that artifact's folder:

 cd ~/jbosstools-src/common/plugins; mvn clean install
 cd ~/jbosstools-src/common/tests/org.jboss.tools.common.model.ui.test; mvn clean install

Putting it all together, here's how you could build & test the JMX Core plugin:

 mvn clean install -f build/parent/pom.xml # parent pom
 mvn clean install -f build/pom.xml -Pjmx-bootstrap -Dmaven.test.skip # bootstrap deps
 mvn clean install -f jmx/plugins/org.jboss.tools.jmx.core/pom.xml # rebuild plugin
 mvn clean install -f jmx/tests/org.jboss.tools.jmx.core.test/pom.xml # rebuild & run test

Running and Debugging Tests

To debug tests, you can read the console output produced by Maven, or you can enable remote debugging using Eclipse.

To control how Maven will behave and how much console output will be produced, here are some useful flags:

 -fae :: fail at end
 -fn  :: fail never

 -q   :: quieter output
 -e   :: if error occurs, dump stack into console
 -X   :: debug output (should log to a file using 
   `mvn clean install -X | tee log.txt` 
   because output will be huge)

Adding a Plugin To An Existing Component

Now that you can build your component, you can easily add a new plugin to that component. Here's how.

0. Make sure your new plugin compiles in your workspace. Ensure your MANIFEST.MF contains all references/includes/requirements you need. Be sure to set the correct Bundle-RequireExecutionEnvironment (eg., JDK5 or JDK6).

1. When you are satisfied, you can commit your new plugin project to SVN.

 cd ~/trunk/as/plugins; \
 svn add org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.rse.core; \
 svn ci -m "JBIDE-123456 Initial commit of new as.rse.core plugin" org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.rse.core

2. Next, add a pom.xml file to the root of your new project.

You can use m2eclipse to help w/ this if you have it installed; otherwise copy from another existing plugin project and edit appropriately. The version of the pom should match the version in the manifest.mf. Note that 3.2.0.qualifier (in MANIFEST.MF) is equivalent to 3.2.0-SNAPSHOT in the pom.xml.

3. Build your plugin:

 cd ~/trunk/as/plugins/org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.rse.core; \
 mvn3 clean install

4. If your component's new plugin builds successfully, you can commit the pom.xml file, and add a reference to the new plugin (module) in the container pom:

 vi ~/trunk/as/plugins/pom.xml

5. To ensure that your plugin is available on the update site, be sure that it is contained in at least one feature's feature.xml.

 
vi ~/trunk/as/features/org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.feature/feature.xml

6. Finally, ensure that the feature appears in all three update sites:

 vi ~/trunk/as/site/site.xml # (the AS update site)
 vi ~/trunk/site/site.xml # (the JBoss Tools update site) and
 vi ~/trunk/build/aggregate/site/site.xml # (the JBoss Tools aggregate update site, incl. pi4soa, Teiid, ...)