Use of a local maven repo and save time downloading artifacts

[michaeldunstan]

It would be useful to have some documentation of how to make use of a local maven repository.

I've tried the suggestion in #22 about using a synced_folder but have not been completely successful with that. The first trial was setting up vagrant with a synced folder for the user vagrant like so:

  config.vm.synced_folder File.expand_path("~/m2-repository"), "/home/vagrant/.m2/repository"

Where ~/m2-repository is an empty directory on my host. This never seemed to be used by maven. I checked while running and after completion of vagrant up but there were never any files in ~/m2-repository.

For the second trail the synced folder was set up for the root user in the VM using:

  config.vm.synced_folder File.expand_path("~/m2-repository"), "/root/.m2/repository"

This time I could see that files were being saved into ~/m2-repository while vagrant up was running. But then all the files were removed just before vagrant up completed.

What directory (and user) should be used for the local maven repo within the VM? And is there some setting (or command) that is clearing out the local maven repo at the end of running all the recipes?

[maoo]

We could add to artifact-deployer the capability to wire -Dmaven.repo.local (if defined by configuration), which would force Maven to use the given repository (whether empty or not).

And yes, artifact-deployer purges - by default - all Maven settings, since I don't want (especially if following an immutable container provisioning paradigm) any trace of provisioning in my box.

https://github.com/maoo/artifact-deployer/blob/master/recipes/default.rb#L40

You can disable it defining

"maven" : {
  "purge_settings" : false
}

[michaeldunstan]

Thanks @maoo. With an empty local repository it takes about 60 minutes for vagrant up to complete for me. With a complete local repository that comes down to about 9 minutes.

Out of interest, if a synced_folder is being used to initially create the VM using an existing local repository you could then remove trace of that provisioning by removing the synced_folder from the vagrant configuration?

[maoo]

Being synced, I'd expect files to be copied over, but I haven't tried, so Im not sure