Next add runtime dependencies in the POM as shown below needed to execute Castor tasks:

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
       <groupId>org.codehaus.castor</groupId>
       <artifactId>castor</artifactId>
       <version>1.1</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
       <groupId>org.codehaus.castor</groupId>
       <artifactId>castor-codegen-anttask</artifactId>
       <version>1.1</version>
       <scope>runtime</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Below is the core part where we'll add maven-antrun-plugin, which can be used to execute Ant tasks. The plug-in can be added to the POM as shown below:

<build>
   <plugins>
     <plugin>
       <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
     <executions>
       <execution>
         <phase>generate-sources</phase>
         <goals>
           <goal>run</goal>
         </goals>
         <configuration>
           <tasks>
             <taskdef classname="org.castor.anttask.CastorCodeGenTask" name="castor">
               <classpath refid="maven.test.classpath"/>
               </taskdef>
                 <castor types="j2"
                   warnings="false"
                   todir="${project.build.directory}/generated-sources/main/java"
                   bindingfile="${basedir}/src/main/castor/employeeBinding.xml">

             <fileset dir="${basedir}/src/main/castor/">
               <include name="*.xsd"/>
             </fileset>
           </castor>
           </tasks>
         <sourceRoot>${project.build.directory}/generated-sources/main/java</sourceRoot>
       </configuration>
         </execution>
     </executions>
     </plugin>
   </plugins>
</build>

As evident from the POM snippet above, the plug-in is configured to execute the run goal of the plug-in when the generate-sources lifecycle phase is triggered. The maven-antrun-plugin will execute any Ant tasks declared in the configuration/tasks element. In this case we define an Ant task named castor using the org.castor.anttask.CastorCodeGenTask Java class. Note that we refer to the maven.test.classpath provided by Maven as a runtime property. This particular classpath will contain all the dependencies including test dependencies. While invoking the declared castor task, we refer to some of the other properties provided by Maven such as the project.build.directory. By default the project.build.directory will point to the currentProjectModule/target directory where project outputs such as classes and reports are usually stored. Note that the POM state information is accessible in the form of runtime properties. For example, the version of the current artifact can be referred to the project.version property. And note that the generated source files will be put in the ${project.build.directory}/generated-sources/main/java directory and by specifying the <sourceRoot>' element under the plug-in configuration, we tell the Maven plug-in to add a generated source directory as a project source directory. To generate sources right-click on the xmlBinding POM file in Eclipse and then in the Run As options select Maven 2 generate-sources as shown in Figure 19.

Eclipse will run a generate-sources lifecycle phase on the xmlBinding POM. The Eclipse console output from the Maven execution will be as shown in Figure 20.

The Castor-generated source files can be found under the target directory and when Maven sources are updated using Maven option in the right-click menu, Eclipse should display the generated source directory in the package explorer as shown in Figure 21.

To deploy the xmlBinding JAR artifact to the local repository for the first time right-click on the parent EmployeeInfo module's POM file in Eclipse and then in Run As options select Maven 2 install. This will run the Maven lifecycle phases till the install phases for the parent and for all the child modules. Maven builds the JAR artifact and copies it over to the local repository along with the POM information as shown in the Figure 22.

Conclusion
In this installment of the article, we have shown how to download and install Maven 2, how to install Maven 2 plugin for Eclipse and how to go about setting up a project directory structure using Maven 2. We used a simple use case of displaying employee details on the web given an employee ID but deliberately made the design a bit complex by introducing design concepts such as XML binding, EJBs, and JCA connectors to illustrate a few of the many features offered by Maven. In the final installment of the article, we will discuss remaining modules from the example application and will illustrate how Maven 2 helps in accomplishing typical development tasks in a fairly easy manner that otherwise would demand significant time and effort to accomplish.

• An Introduction to Maven - Part I
• An Introduction to Maven - Part III