The Publication Build Tool

The Widget Framework includes a publication build tool for building your publication WAR files. The publication build tool is actually a collection of various standard and custom components that you can use together with Maven to build publications efficiently and reliably.

The tools are based around the Maven Shade plug-in, a plug-in designed to simplify the creating of über jars. An über jar is a Maven package that includes all its own dependencies. In this case the Shade plug-in is used to build a publication WAR file that includes the publication itself plus the Widget Framework and all the widgets the publication depends on.

In addition to the Shade plug-in itself, the publication build tool includes several Shade plug-in resource transformers, both standard transformers and custom transformers created specifically for the Widget Framework. A resource transformer is a component that helps manage the process of merging the contents of the JAR files to be included in an über jar.

The publication build tool also includes its own custom Maven plug-in, wf-build-plugin, that can be used to modify XML files (publication resources, for example) during the build process.