In response to Pete’s list…

1. I don’t blog as much as I used to. I’d like to say that’s because I have two other writing projects on the go—which I do—but they’re seeing about the same amount of output.
2. I’m a mild-mannered computer geek by day, and a mild-mannered arts geek by night.
3. I share a birthday with Al Yankovic, which pleases me greatly.
4. Despite many years at university and in the software industry I’m not a coffee drinker. Can’t stand the stuff.
5. I type two spaces after a period. It’s the right thing to do.
6. I have an odd habit of mentally “typing” words and phrases, counting the number of letters, and subdividing them into groups.
7. I love to drive.
8. I was a competitive trivia game player in high school (and even late elementary school). The year our team won the provincial finals there weren’t nationals to go to.
9. I learned to ride a bicycle on one of Ontario’s 400-series highways. Seriously. (Proof.)
10. My favourite author? Harlan Ellison, hands down. Favourite (well-known) playwright? Daniel MacIvor.
11. I played piano for about twelve years and trumpet for a similar period, but it’s been at least that long again since I’ve made a serious attempt to play either instrument.
12. Black licorice. Not red. Yucch the red.
13. I don’t own, and have never owned, a cell phone. This is as much due to the usurious telecom charges in Canada as my own natural tendencies.
14. I can spot even the most innocuous typo at a glance from ten paces.
15. I’m working on a secret project that incorporates at least four other items on this list. (Mu-ha-ha-ha-haaa….)
16. I have a Rubik’s Snake wrapped around the left front speaker of my stereo to prevent it from crackling; it’s been there for more than fifteen years.
17. I have a Mac… which I almost exclusively use through VNC from my GNOME/Fedora desktop.
18. I once broke a finger when I punched a clown at an amusement park in Prince Edward Island.
19. I still think analog watches are a pretty neat idea.
20. I’m told that when I saw Star Wars for the first time, I was creeped out by Threepio and Artoo but not Darth Vader.
21. I’ve only been on the campus of my alma mater once since I graduated.
22. I own two inverted world maps.
23. I find it much easier to promote others than myself.
24. I’m fascinated by process, often more than by the result.
25. A large majority of the people who inspire me are women, and I’m fortunate to count many of them as friends.

And a bonus 26th random thing: it’s taken me two full weeks to finish this list.

 IDS
EAT
FREE

Java WebStart and JNLP can be finicky beasts, especially when paired with Maven-generated websites and artifact repositories. Over the last few months I’ve developed POM and JNLP template patterns that I think are useful when used with the webstart-maven-plugin:jnlp goal; the main advantage is that applications can be WebStarted directly from the repository, which means that the version available is always the latest -SNAPSHOT or release.

In the POM I define two variables, site.baseUrl and artifactUrl. site.baseUrl defines the server and root path where all Maven-generated websites are published; it has a prefix because usually I’d only set it once in the corporate POM. artifactUrl is the full URL of the project-specific website.

By default both site.baseUrl and artifactUrl point to the location where -SNAPSHOT sites are published, usually by a CI system. They’re overridden in two profiles: release switches site.baseUrl to the release website (which is applied to artifactUrl, so there’s no need to set it again), and devel sets artifactUrl to the local target directory (and omits site.baseUrl, which ends up unused).

<project>
...
  <properties>
    <site.baseUrl>http://repository/snapshot-site/</site.baseUrl>
    <artifactUrl>${site.baseUrl}/${project.artifactId}</artifactUrl>
  </properties>
...
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <id>release</id>
      <properties>
        <site.baseUrl>http://repository/release-site/</site.baseUrl>
      </properties>
      <distributionManagement>
        <site>
          <id>release-site</id>
          <url>dav:${artifactUrl}</url>
        </site>
      </distributionManagement>
    </profile>
    <profile>
      <id>devel</id>
      <properties>
        <artifactUrl>file://${project.build.directory}</artifactUrl>
      </properties>
    </profile>
  </profiles>
...
</project>

In the JNLP template, the codebase is set to artifactUrl, which means that the resulting JNLP will retrieve any artifact dependencies from the snapshot, release or local output directories.

<jnlp
  spec="$jnlpspec"
  codebase="${artifactUrl}/jnlp/"
  version="$project.Version"
>
...
</jnlp>

Note that the artifact dependencies still need to be copied into the jnlp directory, which webstart-maven-plugin:jnlp does by default. It would be nice to be able to get them from their canonical locations on the repository, but that’s not easily accomplished.