[maven-2] Maven artifact and groupId naming

I'm currently in the process of moving some project from Ant to Maven. Conformist as I am, I want to use well-established conventions for finding groupId and artifactId, but I can't find any detailed conventions (there are some, but they don't cover the points I'm wondering about).

Take this project for instance, first the Java package: com.mycompany.teatimer

Tea timer is actually two words, but the Java package naming conventions forbid the insertion of underscores or hyphens, so I'm writing it all together.

I chose the groupId identical to the package ID because I think that's a good idea. Is it?

Finally, I have to pick an artifactId, I currently went for teatimer. But when I look at other Maven projects, they use hyphens to split words in artifactIds, like this: tea-timer. But it does look weird when concatenated to the groupId: com.mycompany.teatimer.tea-timer.

How would you do this?

Another example:

Package name: com.mycompany.awesomeinhouseframework

groupId: com.mycompany.awesomeinhouseframework (?)

artifactId: awesome-inhouse-framework (?)

This question is related to maven-2 naming-conventions

The answer is


Consider this to get a fully unique jar file:

  • GroupID - com.companyname.project
  • ArtifactId - com-companyname-project
  • Package - com.companyname.project

However, I disagree the official definition of Guide to naming conventions on groupId, artifactId, and version which proposes the groupId must start with a reversed domain name you control.

com means this project belongs to a company, and org means this project belongs to a social organization. These are alright, but for those strange domain like xxx.tv, xxx.uk, xxx.cn, it does not make sense to name the groupId started with "tv.","cn.", the groupId should deliver the basic information of the project rather than the domain.


Weirdness is highly subjective, I just suggest to follow the official recommendation:

Guide to naming conventions on groupId, artifactId and version

  • groupId will identify your project uniquely across all projects, so we need to enforce a naming schema. It has to follow the package name rules, what means that has to be at least as a domain name you control, and you can create as many subgroups as you want. Look at More information about package names.

    eg. org.apache.maven, org.apache.commons

    A good way to determine the granularity of the groupId is to use the project structure. That is, if the current project is a multiple module project, it should append a new identifier to the parent's groupId.

    eg. org.apache.maven, org.apache.maven.plugins, org.apache.maven.reporting

  • artifactId is the name of the jar without version. If you created it then you can choose whatever name you want with lowercase letters and no strange symbols. If it's a third party jar you have to take the name of the jar as it's distributed.

    eg. maven, commons-math

  • version if you distribute it then you can choose any typical version with numbers and dots (1.0, 1.1, 1.0.1, ...). Don't use dates as they are usually associated with SNAPSHOT (nightly) builds. If it's a third party artifact, you have to use their version number whatever it is, and as strange as it can look.

    eg. 2.0, 2.0.1, 1.3.1


Consider following as for building basic first Maven application:

groupId

  • com.companyname.project

artifactId

  • project

version

  • 0.0.1