os-maven-plugin is a Maven extension/plugin that generates various useful platform-dependent project properties normalized from ${os.name} and ${os.arch}.

${os.name} and ${os.arch} are often subtly different between JVM and operating system versions or they sometimes contain machine-unfriendly characters such as whitespaces. This plugin tries to remove such fragmentation so that you can determine the current operating system and architecture reliably.

Generated properties

os-maven-plugin detects the name of the current operating system and normalizes it into more generic one.

• os.detected.name
  • aix
  • hpux
  • os400
  • linux
  • osx
  • freebsd
  • openbsd
  • netbsd
  • sunos
  • windows

os-maven-plugin also detects the architecture of the current operating system and normalizes it into more generic one.

• os.detected.arch
  • x86_64
  • x86_32
  • itanium_64
  • sparc_32
  • sparc_64
  • arm_32
  • aarch_64
  • ppc_32
  • ppc_64
  • ppcle_64
  • s390_32
  • s390_64

You can also use the ${os.detected.classifier} property, which is a shortcut of ${os.detected.name}-${os.detected.arch}.

Enabling os-maven-plugin on your Maven project

Add the extension to your pom.xml like the following:

<project>
  <build>
    <extensions>
      <extension>
        <groupId>kr.motd.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>os-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.4.0.Final</version>
      </extension>
    </extensions>
  </build>
</project>

Using Gradle?

Use the plugin from Google.

Adding a platform-dependent dependency

Use ${os.detected.classifier} as the classifier of the dependency:

<project>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.example</groupId>
      <artifactId>my-native-library</artifactId>
      <version>1.0.0</version>
      <classifier>${os.detected.classifier}</classifier>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

Generating a platform-dependent dependency

Use ${os.detected.classifier} as the classifier of the produced JAR:

<project>
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <classifier>${os.detected.classifier}</classifier>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

Customized deployments for specific releases of Linux

If you need to customize your deployment based on a specific release of Linux, a few other variables may be made available.

• ${os.detected.release}: provides the ID for the linux release.
• ${os.detected.release.version}: provides version ID for this linux release. Only available if ${os.detected.release} is also available.
• ${os.detected.release.like.<variant>}: Identifies a linux release that this release is "like" (for example, ubuntu is "like" debian). Only available if ${os.detected.release} is also available. An entry will always be made for os.detected.release.like.${os.detected.release}.

For most Linux distributions, these values are populated from the ID, ID_LIKE, and VERSION_ID entries in /etc/os-release or /usr/lib/os-release.

Older variants of Red Hat

If /etc/os-release and /usr/lib/os-release are unavailable, then /etc/redhat-release is inspected. If it contains CentOS, Fedora, or Redhat Enterprise Linux then ${os.detected.release} will be set to centos, fedora, or rhel respectively (other variants are unsupported). "Like" entries will be created for ${os.detected.release} as well as rhel and fedora. The ${os.detected.release.version} variable is currently not set.

Customizing the classifier

You can configure the os-maven-plugin to automatically append a particular "like" value to ${os.detected.classifier}. This greatly simplifies the deployment for artifacts that are different across Linux distributions. The plugin looks for a property named os.detection.classifierWithLikes, which is a comma-separated list of "like" values. The first value found which matches an existing ${os.detected.release.like.<variant>} property will be automatically appended to the classifier.

<project>
  <properties>
    <os.detection.classifierWithLikes>debian,rhel</os.detection.classifierWithLikes>
  </properties>

  <build>
    <extensions>
      <extension>
        <groupId>kr.motd.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>os-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.4.0.Final</version>
      </extension>
    </extensions>
  </build>
</project>

This will result in a ${os.detected.classifier} of linux-<arch>-debian on debian-like systems, linux-<arch>-rhel on rhel systems, and the default of <os>-<arch> on everything else.

Issues with Eclipse m2e or other IDEs

If you are using IntelliJ IDEA, you should not have any problem.

If you are using Eclipse, you need to install an additional Eclipse plugin because m2e does not evaluate the extension specified in a pom.xml. Download os-maven-plugin-1.4.0.Final.jar and put it into the <ECLIPSE_HOME>/plugins directory.

(As you might have noticed, os-maven-plugin is a Maven extension, a Maven plugin, and an Eclipse plugin.)

If you are using other IDEs such as NetBeans, you need to set the system properties os-maven-plugin sets manually when your IDE is launched. You usually use JVM's -D flags like the following:

-Dos.detected.name=linux -Dos.detected.arch=x86_64 -Dos.detected.classifier=linux-x86_64