[MPDF-8] Create one PDF from a multi module project

[anthony-beurive]

An attempt to fix MPDF-8.

It makes maven-pdf-plugin look a bit more like maven-site-plugin in that it adds a pdf:stage goal which aggregates the intermediate outputs of pdf:pdf of each sub-module.

It is a working solution (at least in another project I work on) but nothing is perfect. TOC numbering seems wrong in final PDF (maybe not using a recent doxia with closed DOXIA-564; dependency issue on my part?).

I used JSON to serialize/deserialize the TOC of each sub-module but I can only start to guess it isn't standard maven way.

Comments are welcome.

[hboutemy]

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for this great contribution: it works like a charm.
I'll send you a PR adding an IT.

But there is one serious issue before I can merge: org.json dependency can't be used, since its license is not free (a little addition to MIT license that cause many headache to many lawyers)
https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#json

please replace this dependency with another: Json format is not an issue, just this library

A little enhancement for future work could also be to add a separator page for each module, since currently the swithc from one module to the next one is not really visible: but that one is not a blocker

thanks again for your help: it is greatly appreciated

[anthony-beurive]

Hi Hervé,

Thanks for the comment and the PR. I will merge it right away.
I will then be looking for an alternative to org.json in the coming days.

[anthony-beurive]

I switched to JSONUtil. Its license is Apache's 2004. Does it fit?

[hboutemy]

everything should be fine now, I'll review in a few days
thank you Anthony

[hboutemy]

ok, I worked quite a lot on this PR: I'll send you the result as a PR to your branch
I renamed the goal to pdf:aggregate, since it's an aggregator job (really not like stage), then separated aggregate output from root-module only.
You'll see one impact: now, the root module pdf:aggregate goal does not run reports, but aggregates reports run during pdf:pdf, which is IMHO more consistent
this leads to one big issue: I discover that only Doxia source-generated content is rendered (ie xdoc generated by reports), but not the content that is generated without this xdoc intermediary format
I'll open a separate issue, since it seems our MPDF-48 fix was only partial.
But the consequence on aggregated content is that I fear that there is no code to aggregate such content, isn't it?

[hboutemy]

forget about my last explanations about MPDF-48: I'm completely wrong...

[hboutemy]

if you agree with the changes, please squash the commits and update the PR: this time, I think it'll be ok to merge

[anthony-beurive]

Thanks, Hervé! Commits squashed.

[hboutemy]

merged in b03faf6
thank you