Building and Testing Ehcache

Introduction

This page is intended for those who want to create their own Ehcache or distributed Ehcache build rather than use the packed kit.

Building from Source

These instructions work for each of the modules, except for ehcache-jmsreplication, which requires installation of a message queue. See Replicated Caching using JMS for details.

Building an Ehcache distribution from source

To build Ehcache from source:

  1. Check the source out from the subversion repository.
  2. Ensure you have a valid JDK and Maven 2 installation.
  3. From within the ehcache/core directory, type mvn -Dmaven.test.skip=true install

Running Tests for Ehcache

To run the test suite for Ehcache:

  1. Check the source out from the subversion repository.
  2. Ensure you have a valid JDK and Maven 2 installation.
  3. From within the ehcache/core directory, type mvn test
  4. If some performance tests fail, add a -D net.sf.ehcache.speedAdjustmentFactor=x System property to your command line, where x is how many times your machine is slower than the reference machine. Try setting it to 5 for a start.

Java Requirements and Dependencies

Java Requirements

  • Current Ehcache releases require Java 1.5 and 1.6 at runtime.
  • Ehcache 1.5 requires Java 1.4. Java 1.4 is not supported with Terracotta distributed Ehcache.
  • The ehcache-monitor module, which provides management and monitoring, will work with Ehcache 1.2.3 but only for Java 1.5 or higher.

Mandatory Dependencies

  • Ehcache core 1.6 through to 1.7.0 has no dependencies.
  • Ehcache core 1.7.1 depends on SLF4J (http://www.slf4j.org), an increasingly commonly used logging framework which provides a choice of concrete logging implementation. See the page on Logging for configuration details.

Other modules have dependencies as specified in their maven POMs.

Maven Snippet

To include Ehcache in your project, use:

         <dependency>
  <groupId>net.sf.ehcache</groupId>
  <artifactId>ehcache</artifactId>
  <version>2.3.1</version>
  <type>pom</type>
</dependency>

Note: Be sure to substitute the version number above with the version number of Ehcache that you want to use.

If using Terracotta Distributed Ehcache, also add:

         <dependency>
  <groupId>org.terracotta</groupId>
  <artifactId>terracotta-toolkit-1.4-runtime</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.0</version>
</dependency>

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>terracotta-repository</id>
    <url>http://www.terracotta.org/download/reflector/releases</url>
    <releases>
      <enabled>true</enabled>
    </releases>
  </repository>
</repositories>

Be sure to check the dependency versions for compatibility. Versions released in a single kit are guaranteed compatible.

Distributed Cache Development with Maven and Ant

With a Distributed Ehcache, there is a Terracotta Server Array. At development time, this necessitates running a server locally for integration and/or interactive testing. There are plugins for Maven and Ant to simplify and automate this process.

For Maven, Terracotta has a plugin available which makes this very simple.

Setting up for Integration Testing

         <pluginRepositories>
   <pluginRepository>
       <id>terracotta-snapshots</id>
       <url>http://www.terracotta.org/download/reflector/maven2</url>
       <releases>
           <enabled>true</enabled>
       </releases>
       <snapshots>
           <enabled>true</enabled>
       </snapshots>
   </pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>
<plugin>
   <groupId>org.terracotta.maven.plugins</groupId>
   <artifactId>tc-maven-plugin</artifactId>
   <version>1.5.1</version>
   <executions>
       <execution>
           <id>run-integration</id>
           <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
           <goals>
               <goal>run-integration</goal>
           </goals>
       </execution>
       <execution>
           <id>terminate-integration</id>
           <phase>post-integration-test</phase>
           <goals>
               <goal>terminate-integration</goal>
           </goals>
       </execution>
   </executions>
</plugin>

Note: Be sure to substitute the version number above with the current version number.

Interactive Testing

To start Terracotta:

         mvn tc:start

To stop Terracotta:

         mvn tc:stop

See the Terracotta Forge for a complete reference.