Travis CI:

BuildHive:

What is maven-lab-plugin?

This is a Maven plugin used to create stepwise labs which a developer can use to learn new technologies, frameworks and tools.

For example a test driven lab can easily be created by letting each step of lab add new test cases, either new classes or simply new methods. The student can then modify the main code until the test passes and then move to the next step of the lab.

Commands:

• mvn lab:init initializes the lab at step 0
• mvn lab:next moves to the next step of the lab
• mvn lab:currentStep shows the current step
• mvn lab:reset restores all files that were affected by the lab
• mvn lab:setStep -DlabStep=nnn to change to a particular step of the lab

Tags to add code in steps:

• @BEGIN_VERSION <stepNo> start a block of code that will start to be included in the step and onwards
• @END_VERSION <stepNo> end the block of code

Tags to add code that will only appear in a particular step:

• @BEGIN_VERSION_ONLY <stepNo> start a block of code that belongs to a step
• @END_VERSION_ONLY <stepNo> end a block of code that belongs to a step

Tags to add code up to a specified version:

• @BEGIN_UP_TO_VERSION start a block of code that will be included up to (but not including) a version
• @END_UP_TO_VERSION end the block of code

Notice that the entire line containing a tag will be removed from the output! The purpose of this is to support tags regardless of the file format, eg java, properties or xml.

The stepNo can either be a number or a constant. When using constants they must be specified in a file called labStepConstants.properties placed in the root of the project. The line number of the constant is used as stepNo.

Process:

• Create lab code
• Add version TAGS:
  • @BEGIN_VERSION
  • @END_VERSION
  • @BEGIN_VERSION_ONLY
  • @END_VERSION_ONLY
  • @BEGIN_UP_TO_VERSION
  • @END_UP_TO_VERSION
• Add maven-lab-plugin to the pom.xml
• Start the lab with mvn lab:init; the lab is initialized at step 0
• Run mvn lab:next to move to next step of the lab
• Perform next step of the lab, repeat previous until done

This should go into your pom.xml:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>com.jayway.maven.plugins.lab</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-lab-plugin</artifactId>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Examples

Example: How do we achieve a lab of two steps?

Step 1:

function first() { }
first();

Step 2:

function first() { }
function second() { }
second();

Solution:

// @BEGIN_VERSION First
function first() { }
// @END_VERSION First
// @BEGIN_VERSION Second
function second() { }
// @END_VERSION Second
// @BEGIN_VERSION_ONLY First
first();
// @END_VERSION_ONLY First
// @BEGIN_VERSION_ONLY Second
second();
/* @END_VERSION_ONLY Second */

Notice that it doesn't matter what type of comment style we use and that the entire line containing the tag is removed.