As a frontend web developer, I often find myself in a larger project, where I’m responsible for the frontend web app, and others work on the backend. More often than not lately, this has meant everything is a big Maven project, with several submodules. My frontend web app being one such Maven submodule.

I usually want to use Node.js and specifically npm from a Makefile when building “my” frontend web app. This clashes with the Maven setup, specifically in that other project members don’t always want to install Node.js just to be able to continuing building the entire project.

The specific problem of Auto-installing Node.js and npm from a Makefile, is solved. However, it remains to call make from inside the Maven pom.xml.

This is how you can call make from inside a Maven project:

Make sure you have set up <dependencyManagement/> like this in your parent pom:

  
    
      
        maven-antrun-plugin
        1.7
        
          
            ant-contrib
            ant-contrib
            1.0b3
            
              
                ant
                ant
              
            
          
          
            org.apache.ant
            ant-nodeps
            1.8.1
          
        
      
    
  

Then have this in your frontend web app’s pom.xml:

  
    
      maven-antrun-plugin
      
        
          make
          generate-sources
          
            run
          
          
            
              
              
            
          
        
      
    
  

Now whenever anyone builds the project with Maven, it will call make and the first target in Makefile will execute.

Combine this with Auto-install Node.js and npm from Makefile, and you have a winner!