18

Assuming that we have a project named project and modules module1 and module2, earlier I tend to use the following naming strategy:

-- project
  -- projectModule1
  -- projectModule2

Now I use another:

-- project
  -- project-module1
  -- project-module2

What are best practices for Maven modules naming?

Pascal Thivent
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Maksim Sorokin
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3 Answers3

25

I wrote some notes on this in the "Effective Implementation" book, but there is no rule or canonical convention.

To summarise some:

First of all, the most important things is that you are consistent.

General Maven convention uses '-' as the separator (commons-lang, maven-model).

If you intend for it to be used externally, remember the module = artifact ID = filename (in best practice), so it needs to be recognisable (maven-model-2.0.jar is clear, model-2.0.jar is not). In this case, you usually repeat the last element of the group ID as a mini-namespace. "Internal" modules may omit it for brevity (As the example application shows: http://github.com/brettporter/centrepoint/tree/master/centrepoint/modules/).

Aside from that, I'd keep them as short as possible.

You might draw the parallel between Java package and class naming conventions to Maven group and artifact IDs.

Sergey Vyacheslavovich Brunov
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Brett Porter
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5

I usually try to keep module names brief. If the name 'wants' to be long, that's an indication that another nesting level is probably a good idea. So instead of this:

- root
    - api
    - impl
    - security
    - service-soap
    - service-rest
    - client-swing
    - client-web-html
    - client-web-mobile

I'd nest things further:

- root
    - api
    - impl
    - security
    - service
        - soap
        - rest
    - client
        - swing
        - web
            - html
            - mobile

through maven reactor options you can still build the nested modules isolated from the top:

mvn -pl client/web clean install
Sean Patrick Floyd
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1

You can even go one step further:

-- project
  -- project-module-1
  -- project-module-2

No joking now, this is really a question of taste.

Have a nice day Maksim

Boris Pavlović
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    Good suggestion. However, in this naming strategy I would prefer to reserve "-" character for separating nested modules. So "project-module-1" would mean that there is parent project "project", which has a child project "module", which has a child project "1". – Maksim Sorokin Aug 18 '10 at 07:39
  • Then project-module_1 would do the job. – Boris Pavlović Aug 18 '10 at 07:47