There are many variations for deploying customizations into an Alfresco installation. Working as a global team on multiple projects, Blue Fish Development Group has created a set of processes, using standard tools such as Maven and Ant, to keep the development and deployment cycle sane. Working as a team presents challenges for maintaining source control and being able to quickly roll out the latest version of changes, and managing multiple projects requires the ability to quickly stand up a development environment and begin testing changes. You’ll learn Blue Fish’s procedures and walk away with a basic set of tools that will let you build your own development/ deployment framework that will reduce cycle time, improve repeatability and revert to a known/clean state.

1. Keeping Your Sanity
Rapid Development & Deployment Tools"
October 26th, 2011"
Gary Cox – Blue Fish Development Group"

2. Overview"
Who is the Target Audience?
• New Alfresco developers trying to get a better understanding of
potential approaches to developing and deploying custom code"
• Developers that currently have some components of a system in
place, but need a more complete solution"
• Developers looking to see “What else is out there?”"
• Some Java platform experience is assumed"
What will We Cover Today?
• Discussion of the overall approach and the open source tools that
we use"
• Solutions to tricky problems using these standard tools"
• Brief demonstration of using these tools against Alfresco
Community 4.0.a"
• Where to go to find more information"

3. Goals"
Quick Overview of Alfresco Deployment Concepts
• Review Alfresco deployment approaches"
• Developing in a team environment"
Understand the Challenges
• Choosing a deployment model"
• Developing and deploying in a team environment"
• Ramping up new developers"
• Quickly standing up new projects"
Tools and Processes to Make this Process Easier
• Use Open Source tools"
• More than just tools: Provide a process"
• Process should be adaptable to different tools"

4. Who is Blue Fish Development Group?"
Alfresco Platinum Partner"
Focused on ECM for 12 years
• Document Management and
Collaboration"
• Custom Application
Development"
• Content Migrations"
Client Base
• Global 2000"
• Growing Mid-Market Companies"
Key Offerings
• Alfresco Quick Starts"
• Turnkey ECM Solutions"
• Alfresco Projects in "Small Bites""

5. Guiding Principles"
What are the Guiding Principles for Our Development
Tools and Processes?"
• Improve repeatability"
• Controlled releases"
• Ability to quickly ramp up Developers"
• Ability to quickly stand up new Development environments"
• Modularity"
• Keep customizations separate from Alfresco"
• Keep customizations in project-specific paths to support
multiple modules"
• Efficiency "
• Ability to develop against a variety of Alfresco versions"
• Reduce cycle time"
• Ability to revert to a known/clean state"

6. Review Potential Deployment Approaches"
Many Potential Approaches to
Deploying Custom code
• Overwrite existing files under
the WEB-INF directory"
• Deploy into /extension or /
web-extension paths of the
application"
• Deploy code into the /shared
path"
• Package customizations into
AMP files and deploy into /
module path"

7. Points of Pain for These Approaches 1"
Overwrite existing files under the WEB-INF directory
• Disadvantages"
• Nightmare for maintenance"
• Can make every upgrade a difficult process"
• No central location for customizations"

8. Points of Pain for These Approaches 2"
Deploy batch of customized files into the /extension or /web-
extension paths of the application
• Advantages"
• Overriding instead of replacing out of the box functionality, which is a good
thing"
• Disadvantages"
• How to handle packaging and versioning of content?"
• Are you all on the same version of the files?"
• What version is out there, anyway?"
• How to integrate multiple packages?"

9. Points of Pain for These Approaches 3"
Deploy code into the /shared path
• Advantages"
• Doesnʼt get overwritten by new deployments of WAR files"
• Good for environment-specific files (like properties files)"
• Disadvantages"
• This is typically where server specific properties files reside. May require
tweaking the set of deployed files"
• Potential versioning issues"
• Integrating multiple projects"

10. Points of Pain for These Approaches 4"
Package customizations into AMP files
• Advantages"
• Quick to deploy a set of customizations"
• Can group customizations into multiple AMPs if needed"
• Provides a way to install a known version of an AMP (and an easy way to
check the installed version)"
• Easier to avoid problems when integrating add-ons from multiple sources"
• Disadvantages"
• Packaging into an amp can take longer"
• Current deployment tool does not support uninstalling an AMP"
• Typically still need a way to deploy environment-specific properties files"

11. Team Development Headaches"
What are the Considerations when Working as a Team?
• Coordinated modification of the source"
• Source control"
• Continuous Integration"
• Bringing new developers onto a project"
• Modularization"
• Developers can focus on their areas of expertise"
• Can work on subset of project that you are focused on"

12. Blue Fishʼs Approach to Keeping Things Sane"
Developed a Set of Tools and Procedures to Meet our Needs
• Open source tools"
• Scripts to bootstrap development environments"
• Scripts to speed up development and deployment tasks"
• Integration with an Integrated Development Environment to let
developers get to work quickly.""
• Java developers may not even require extensive Alfresco knowledge to
work on specific tasks ""
• Development environments split Alfresco Repository and Share"
What Tools Do We Use?
• Subversion"
• Maven"
• Nexus"
• Ant"
• Eclipse"
• Bamboo for CI (not Open Source, but Hudson is another option)"

13. Process Overview 1"

14. Process Overview 2 (The Bigger Picture)"

15. Overview of Deployment Stack: Build"
Maven"
• Maven Benefits"
• Manage transitive
dependencies"
• Easy to modularize build"
• Standardization across
projects and build types"
• Share build elements (POM
inheritance)"
• Single point of project
configuration"
• Declarative: What needs to
be done? (versus ʻHow?ʼ)"
• Project Object Model
(POM) files define projects"
• Project dependencies"
• Project Modules"
• Required Plugins"

16. Overview of Deployment Stack: Artifact Repo"
Nexus"
• Used to maintain our
corporate Maven
repository"
• Alfresco JAR files can be
added to the repository as
Artifacts"
• Can maintain local
repositories and point to
public repositories on the
Internet"
• Developers donʼt need to
know where artifacts come
from… ʻone stop shopʼ"
• At Blue Fish we maintain a
repository for 3rd Party
libraries and our own
artifacts"

17. Overview of Deployment Stack: IDE"
Eclipse
• We typically use Eclipse, but
other IDEs can be used"
• NetBeans"
• IntelliJ IDEA"
• Maven can generate Eclipse
projects"
• mvn eclipse:eclipse"
• Import project"
• Point to Maven repository by
setting M2_REPO path"
• The Maven POM mappings
between source directories
and target paths"
• Rapid search across project
source and Alfresco source/
config files"

18. Overview of Deployment Stack: Deployment"
Ant
• Ant scripts are used for deploying AMP files into Development
Environment"
• Pulls out of the box Alfresco WAR files from Maven Repo"
• Deploys AMP file(s) into the WAR"
• Removes old folder structure"
• Can ʻfast-deployʼ into Share"
• Ant scripts can be configured to install multiple AMPs as
dependencies as required (for example the Alfresco FDK AMP)"
• Everything comes from the Maven Repo (Maven Ant Tasks)"

19. Overview of Deployment Stack: Source Control"
Subversion
• Broad platform and tools
support"
• For Continuous Integration
(CI), builds are performed on
code check-in"
• We use Atlassian Bamboo
for CI, but other tools such
as Hudson could be used"

20. Process Walkthrough"
You Have a New Project (or Projects!) or a New Team
Member… How do You Get Started?
• Need to stand up a development environment"
• Need the ability to get additional developers ramped up on the
project quickly (may have variety of skill sets)"
• Need to deal with task switching between multiple projects"
• Need self-contained stack to switch from project to project rapidly"
Demonstration of a Working Environment
• Developers can get started quickly"
• Can even hand this off to run ʻofflineʼ once Maven dependencies
have been downloaded"
• The tools handle packaging the AMP and setting the targets for
folders."
• Developers just need to know to write their code in a few source
folders"
• Developers donʼt need to know about other modules or
dependencies"

21. Standing Up a New Developer"
Step 1
• Get a copy of a project folder"
• Contains an Alfresco
installation (Community, in this
case)"
• All required tools are in the
“tools” folder"
• Downloaded Maven
dependencies are in “maven-
repo”"

22. Standing Up a New Developer"
Step 2
• Perform source code update
to get latest code"

23. Local Build/Deployment Cycle"
Step 1
• Validate that it will
build:"
• ʻmvn clean installʼ"
Step 2
• Create Eclipse project:"
• ʻmvn eclipse:eclipseʼ"
Step 3
• Launch Eclipse"
• Import Existing Project into Workspace (trunk directory) to import Alfresco
and Share"
• If using Maven Eclipse plug-in, remember to set ʻM2_REPOʼ build path
variable and point to ʻmaven-repoʼ (not required if using Eclipse M2Eclipse
plug-in)"

24. Local Build/Deployment Cycle"
Step 4
• Save custom code in Eclipse"
• Typically will use existing /src paths"
Step 5
• Test building and deploying into local Alfresco environment:"
• ʻmvn clean installʼ"
• ʻant clean-install-and-deployʼ"
• We have a variety of convenience deployment targets"
• ʻant –projecthelpʼ provides a list of deployment targets"
Step 6
• Start local Alfresco Repository and Share and review changes"
• We start the servers with BAT files"
• Separate Tomcat instances for Alfresco Repository and Alfresco Share"
• BAT file starts the database"

25. Challenges that We Encountered"
Environmental
• Had issues with OpenOffice if it was nested too deeply"
Maven Challenges
• Alfresco Module Management Tool doesnʼt understand non-numeric
version numbers (e.g. 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT)"
• We use a plug-in to produce a version number to strip ʻSNAPSHOTʼ"
• Eclipse integration: Neither the Maven Eclipse plug-in and the Eclipse
M2Eclipse plug-in understand AMP packaging"
• Declare ʻJARʼ packaging and explicitly package and include as AMP"
ANT
• Maven Ant Tasks"
• Donʼt understand redefining the Central Repository to point at corporate
repository."
• Have to explicitly declare a Remote Repository"

26. Interested in the Presentation Materials?"
• We are hoping to be able to provide some portion of the examples and the
slides on our FTP site"
• We have a sign in sheet if youʼre interested in getting access to the materials
when they are available."
• Check for updates here:"
• http://bit.ly/toeD9Y"

27. Resources"
Where to find the tools discussed in this presentation:
• Maven"
• http://maven.apache.org/"
• Maven Ant Tasks"
• http://maven.apache.org/ant-tasks/index.html"
• Nexus"
• http://nexus.sonatype.org/"
• Hudson"
• http://hudson-ci.org/"
• Eclipse"
• http://www.eclipse.org/"
• Ant"
• http://ant.apache.org/"
• Subversion"
• http://subversion.apache.org/"
• Blue Fish Development Group"
• http://www.bluefishgroup.com/"