newbie variable expansion in pom.xml and arquillian.xml

[jrhite_boss]

I'm a complete newbie to arquillian and have only the most basic exposure to maven.

I'm try to get at environment variables in arquillian.xml. Specifically my JBOSS_HOME dir. I don't want to hardcode this as I can't make assumptions about how other developers on my team are setup.

I read this related thread, but after some debugging, in the arquillian.xml file it seems that variables like ${JBOSS_HOME} get passed straight through as is and don't get expanded to their actual values. I read a related thread on this:

https://community.jboss.org/thread/174152

My pom.xml looks like:

      <plugin>

        <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>

        <version>2.12</version>

        <configuration>

          <systemPropertyVariables>

            <JBOSS_HOME>${env.JBOSS_HOME}</JBOSS_HOME>

          </systemPropertyVariables>

          <systemProperties>

            <arquillian.launch>jbossas-managed</arquillian.launch>

          </systemProperties>

          <skip>false</skip>

        </configuration>

      </plugin>

And my arquillian.xml file looks like:

    <arquillian xmlns="http://jboss.org/schema/arquillian"

        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

        xsi:schemaLocation="

        http://jboss.org/schema/arquillian

        http://jboss.org/schema/arquillian/arquillian_1_0.xsd">

         <container qualifier="jbossas-managed" default="true">

            <configuration>

                <property name="jbossHome">${JBOSS_HOME}</property>

            </configuration>

        </container>

    </arquillian>

When I hardcode the path to jboss_home in my arquillian.xml file my tests run fine. If I don't, I see the error:

org.jboss.arquillian.container.spi.ConfigurationException: jbossHome '${JBOSS_HOME}' must exist

          at org.jboss.arquillian.container.spi.client.deployment.Validate.configurationDirectoryExists(Validate.java:139)

  <...snip...>

2 questions:

1. Why isn't ${JBOSS_HOME} getting expanded in the arquillian.xml file?
2. In pom.xml, are the lines:

          <systemProperties>

            <arquillian.launch>jbossas-managed</arquillian.launch>

          </systemProperties>

          <skip>false</skip>

even needed?

I've been out of touch with the full-blown JEE world for a while and need to catch up on maven and tools for testing EJB3s, etc...Not sure if maven is worth it, but arquillian sure looks nice!

Thanks much.

[kpiwko]

Hi,

ad 1. Where do you run you tests from? If it is Maven (CLI), it should work, if it's IDE than it is likely ignoring surefire configuration.

I'd suggest to try ${env.JBOS_HOME:default/path} in arquillian.xml and removing surefire related conf. To make this work in IDE even better, you can use following approach:

a/ Enable filtering

https://github.com/kpiwko/html5-demoapp/blob/javaone-sfo-2012/pom.xml#L248

b/ Making sure that you use resources plugin 2.5+

c/ use plain ${foobar} in arquillian.xml

d/ make sure that property you want to filter is defined in <properties> in your pom.xml

ad 2. You can safely remove all those lines. arquillian.launch property is only needed if you have multiple containers configuration;-)

[jrhite_boss]

Ah, yes, I'm running from Eclipse. Thanks for the insight!

I took the steps you recommended, and then also added an Eclipse ENV JBOSS_HOME variable to the run configuration for the JUnit test.

I added the property <JBOSS_HOME>${env.JBOSS_HOME}</JBOSS_HOME> to the pom.xml which is now correctly being resolved and passed along to the arquillian.xml file. And my tests are running. :-)

1. From the link you provided at line 248:

https://github.com/kpiwko/html5-demoapp/blob/javaone-sfo-2012/pom.xml#L248

is the really correct? It seems non-sensical to both include and exclude the same thing (ie: **/arquillian.xml and **/arquillian.launch are both included and excluded at the same time). I'm assuming it's a typo and that including src/test/resources and excluding src/main/resources was the intention (instead src/test/resources was provided twice).

2. I also commented out the surefire plugin, but is this really recommended? The documentation in the Arquillian Getting Started Guide is pretty specific about using surefire instead of the default version:

(Optional) We recommend upgrading the Maven Surefire Plugin from the default version, for reasons described inthis FAQ. You can set the version of the Surefire Plugin by appending this <plugin> element inside the <plugins>element, just below the Maven Compiler Plugin:

[kpiwko]

Thanks, there's indeed a typo, <filtering>true</filtering> where included, and it should be false where excluded ;-). This remove the possibility to break your binary resources if you're unlucky and they contain the ${foo} string.

As for Surefire, I meant to remove <configuration> element, keeping <plugin> with a specific version is definitely recommened!