Make Maven Proxy/Server settings configurable based on location?

Question

So I'm not sure what the best way to accomplish this is, but basically I have a laptop that I use at work for Maven projects. It works fine when I'm at work, but as soon as I walk out of the door of their corporate proxy and maven server, I often have to do alot of hand-fudging of the settings.xml file when I'm at home if I'm not VPN'ed in:

• We have a corporate-installed Maven Repository proxy server to store some of our own artifacts and handle being the middle-man for our commonly used artifacts.
• We have an http proxy that we use for connecting to the outside world.

Both configurations have been handled by my settings.xml file for setting a single Nexus group and maven proxies. If I'm not connected to the VPN while away from the office, I have to muck around with the settings.xml each time I'm not on it, then switch it back when I am on it.

What solutions have anyone else found to handle this? I've been trying profiles to manage the proxy, but I can't seem to get it to work correctly, and it's starting to look pretty ugly. Are there some settings configurations that can detect when I'm not behind the proxy at work and not use the corporate proxy server or Maven server?

Answer 1

While I can think of some profile based solution to handle the proxy (basically, reading the <active> value from a property defined in a profile), this wouldn't be fully automated (the profile activation do not support network based stuff) unless you can find a file that is present or not depending on your location (in which case, you could use an existing/missing file trigger but this is kinda hacky). Anyway, this would solve only one part of the problem because mirrors can't be declared in profiles (see MNG-3525).

So, instead of trying to control this with a profile, my suggestion would be to use two settings.xml and to pass your settings-home.xml file with the -s command line option when you're at home.

Another option would be to automate the changes in your settings.xml with a script (Groovy would be a good choice as someone reported in MNG-3525).

Answer 2

I found a use environment variables to set nonProxyHosts together with proxy and noproxy shell aliases to be the most convenient solution when switching between networks with proxy and without it.

In settings.xml, configure proxy with

<host>proxy.corporation.int</host>
<port>8080</port>
<nonProxyHosts>${env.MAVEN_NONPROXY}</nonProxyHosts>

Then in ~/.profile set

export MAVEN_NONPROXY_PROXY='*.corporation.int|local.net|some.host.com'
export MAVEN_NONPROXY_NOPROXY='*'

alias proxy="export MAVEN_NONPROXY=\"$MAVEN_NONPROXY_PROXY\" && export all_proxy=http://proxy.corporation.int:8080"
alias noproxy="export MAVEN_NONPROXY=\"$MAVEN_NONPROXY_NOPROXY\" && unset all_proxy"

To do the switch when roaming, you would just execute from a shell:

[me@linuxbox me]$ proxy

or

[me@linuxbox me]$ noproxy

Obviously, both aliases proxy and noproxy can include much more changes than just setup of MAVEN_NOPROXY and all_proxy.

Answer 3

I was frustrated by the same problem: having to manually edit settings.xml when roaming between networks. So much in fact, that I wrote a Maven plugin that enables automatic discovery of proxy settings. The current implementation uses the proxy-vole library written by Bernd Rosstauscher to detect proxy settings based on OS configuration, browser, and environment settings.

I've just released the source code of the plugin on Github, under an Apache 2.0 license: https://github.com/volkertb/autoproxy-maven-plugin

You're welcome to give it a try and to see if it meets your needs. Any feedback or contributions are welcome!

(Note: you don't necessarily have to add the plugin to your project's POM. You can invoke it from the command line as well, after you've installed it. See the README on the site for more details.)

Answer 4

You can set MAVEN_OPTS when you need to activate a proxy:

export MAVEN_OPTS="-Dhttp.proxyHost=my-proxy-server -Dhttp.proxyPort=80 -Dhttp.nonProxyHosts=*.my.org -Dhttps.proxyHost=my-proxy-server -Dhttps.proxyPort=80 -Dhttps.nonProxyHosts=*.my.org"