Installing Maven

Download latest Maven unzip it and add it to your path:

# go to the place you want to install Maven to
cd ~/Library
# download latest Maven version
curl -O http://apache.autinity.de/maven/binaries/apache-maven-2.2.1-bin.zip
# unzip the archive
unzip apache-maven-2.2.1-bin.zip
# add a symlink for convenience
ln -s apache-maven-2.2.1 maven
# add Maven executables to the PATH
echo export PATH="~/Library/maven/bin":\$PATH >> ~/.profile
# open a new bash and check Maven is running
mvn --version

Creating a Maven webapp

Now that Maven is running on your system, you can use it to create a standard webapp:

# go to the workspace
cd ~/Documents/workspace/
# let Maven create a webapp
mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=de.nofail -DartifactId=tmp -Dversion=1.0.0-SNAPSHOT -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-webapp
# go to the webapp
cd tomcat-logging/
# let Maven create a distributable war
mvn clean package

Maven is a stupid fuck, so it will create your application with Java 1.4 compatibility by default. You need to fix this in the pom.xml by changing the compiler plugin:

  ...
  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.2</version>
    <configuration>
      <source>1.6</source>
    	  <target>1.6</target>
    </configuration>
  </plugin>
  ...

Running from the command line

You can run the example directly from the command line through Maven:

mvn jetty:run &
open http://localhost:8080/tomcat-logging/	

The Maven Jetty plugin is configured (no, this is no default!) to pick up changes to the sources every 10 seconds. The plugin does not do hot code replacement but instead restarts the whole servlet context, which is very slow. So if you play around with the code, you should consider doing it within Eclipse.

MVN for Eclipse integration

Maven has an embedded task to build up an Eclipse .classpath and .project file from an existing pom.xml :

# configure your workspace (do not use ~ to point to your home!)
mvn eclipse:configure-workspace -Declipse.workspace=../
# create Eclipse files
mvn eclipse:eclipse

The resulting Eclipse configuration sets the Java compiler to Java 1.4 and sets a bad JRE System Library which you should reset to the default.

Better with Eclipse plugins

If you want a better solution, you need to install some Eclipse plugins that enable you to run the example form within Eclipse.

Install m2eclipse and run jetty run from their update sites.

Restart Eclipse and import existing Project tomcat-logging into Workspace.

Go to Debug Configurations and use the tomcat-logging launcher.

You should be able to open the servlet in your browser.

Configure log4j at runtime

Run the servlet and change something in the tomcat-logging-log4j.xml configuration file. The behavior of log4j should change while the servlet is running.

More

Have a look at the Mavenrepository if you are looking for any libs.