add gem dependencies for jar files to ruby gems.
jar dependencies are declared in the gemspec of the gem using the same notation as https://github.com/mkristian/jbundler.
when using require_jar
to load the jar into JRuby's classloader a version conflict
will be detected and only ONE jar gets loaded.
jbundler allows to select the version suitable for you application.
most maven-artifact do NOT use versions ranges but depend on a concrete version. in such cases jbundler can always overwrite any such version.
add following to your Rakefile:
require 'jar_installer'
task :install_jars do
Jars::JarInstaller.vendor_jars
end
which will install (download) the dependent jars into JARS_HOME and create a
file lib/my_gem_jars.rb which will be an enumeration of require_jars
statements to load all the jars.
the vendor_jars task will copy them into the lib directory of the gem.
the location where jars are cached is per default $HOME/.m2/repository the same default as Maven uses to cache downloaded jar-artifacts. it respects $HOME/.m2/settings.xml from Maven with mirror and other settings or the environment variable JARS_HOME.
IMPORTANT: make sure that jar-dependencies is only a development dependency of your gem. if it is a runtime dependency the require_jars file will be overwritten during installation.
if you do not want to vendor jars into a gem then jar-dependency gem can vendor
them when you install the gem. in that case do not use
Jars::JarInstaller.install_jars
from the above rake tasks.
NOTE:recent JRuby comes with jar-dependencies as default gem, for older versions for the feature to work you need to gem install jar-dependencies first and for bundler need to use the bundle-with-jars command instead.
IMPORTANT: make sure that jar-dependencies is a runtime dependency of your gem so the require_jars file will be overwritten during installation with the "correct" versions of the jars.
just set an environment variable
export JARS_VENDOR=false
this tells the jar_installer not vendor any jars but only create the file with the
require_jar
statements. this require_jars
method will find the jar inside the
maven local repository and loads it from there.
- first you need to install the jar-dependency gem with its development dependencies installed (then ruby-maven gets installed as well)
- bundler does not install the jar-dependencies (unless JRuby adds the gem as default gem)
- you need ruby-maven doing the job of dependency resolution and downloading them. gems not part of http://rubygems.org will not work currently
per default all jars need to come from maven-central (<search.maven.org>), in order to use jars from any other repo you need to add it into your Maven settings.xml and configure it in a way that works without an interactive prompt (username + passwords needs to be part of the settings.xml file).
NOTE: gems depending on jars other then maven-central will NOT work when they get published on rubygems.org since the user of those gems will not have the right settings.xml to allow them to access the jar dependencies.
an example with rspec and all walks you through setup and shows how development works and shows what happens during installation.
there are some more examples with the various project setups for gems and application. this includes using proper Maven for the project or ruby-maven with rake or the rake-compiler in conjuction with jar-dependencies.
whenever there are version ranges for jar dependencies then it is advisable to lock down the versions of dependecies. for the jar dependencies inside the gemspec declaration this can be done with:
lock_jars
this is also working in any project which uses a gem with jar-dependencies. it also uses a Jarfile if present. see the sinatra application from the examples.
this means for project using bundler and jar-dependencies the setup is
bundle install
lock_jars
which will install both gems and jars for the project.
update a specific version is done with (use only the artifact_id)
lock_jars --update slf4j-api
and look at the dependencies tree
lock_jars --tree
as lock_jars
uses ruby-maven to resolve the jar dependencies.
since jar-dependencies does not declare ruby-maven as runtime dependency
(you just not need ruby-maven during runtime only when you want to
setup the project it is needed) it is advicable to have it as
development dependency in you Gemfile.
for dependency management frameworks like gradle (via jruby-gradle-plugin) or maven (via jruby-maven-plugins or jruby9-maven-plugins) or probably ivy or sbt can use the gem artifacts from a maven repository like rubygems-proxy from torquebox or rubygems.lasagna.io/proxy/maven/releases.
each of these tools (including jar-dependencies) does the dependency resolution slightly different and in rare cases can produce different outcomes. but overall each tool can manage both jars and gems and their transitive dependencies.
popular gems like jrjackson or nokogiri do not declare their jars in the gemspec files and just load the bundle jars into jruby classloader, can easily create problems as the jackson and xalan/xerces libraries used by those gems are popular ones in the java world.
ENV | java system property | default | description |
`JARS_DEBUG` | jars.debug | false | if set to true it will produce lots of debug out (maven -X switch) |
`JARS_VERBOSE` | jars.verbose | false | if set to true it will produce some extra output |
`JARS_HOME` | jars.home | $HOME/.m2/repository | filesystem location where to store the jar files and some metadata |
`JARS_MAVEN_SETTINGS` | jars.maven.settings | $HOME/.m2/settings.xml | setting.xml for maven to use |
`JARS_VENDOR` | jars.vendor | true | set to true means that the jars will be stored in JARS_HOME only |
`JARS_SKIP` | jars.skip | true | do **NOT** install jar dependencies at all |
just today I tumbled across https://github.com/arrigonialberto86/ruby-band which usees jbundler to manage their jar dependencies which happens on the first 'require "ruby-band"'. their is no easy or formal way to find out which jars are added to jruby-classloader.
another issue was brought to my notice yesterday mmmries/derelicte#1
or the question of how to manage jruby projects with maven http://ruby.11.x6.nabble.com/Maven-dependency-management-td4996934.html
or a few days ago an issue for the rake-compile rake-compiler/rake-compiler#87
with JRuby 9000 it is the right time to get jar dependencies "right" - the current situation is like the time before bundler for gems.