tobiasmanske.de/content/posts/2021-02-23-maven-ij-designer.md

title	date	categories	tags	summary	showTOC
Compiling IntelliJ Designer Forms with Maven	2021-02-23T03:59:59+01:00	software	hacking english software engineering maven	Ever wanted to compile IntelliJ IDEA GUI-Designer forms with maven? I've found a 2021 solution.	false

In 2021 I worked in a small team of students on an old fashioned Java swing application. To design our forms rather fast, we chose to opt for the IJ-GUI designer.

That was a rather annoying mistake, trying to package that thing just hours before the deadline. We then opted to just let IntelliJ compile the .forms into .java directly, which then cluttered our version control.

So today I present you a minimal pom.xml compiling forms on the fly. A complete minimal working example can be found on my private git: git.tobiasmanske.de

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>de.tobiasmanske</groupId>
  <artifactId>example</artifactId>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

  <properties>
    <maven.compiler.source>11</maven.compiler.source>
    <maven.compiler.target>11</maven.compiler.target>
    <intellij.version>203.7148.57</intellij.version>
  </properties>

  <repositories>
    <repository>
      <id>jetbrains.releases</id>
      <url>https://www.jetbrains.com/intellij-repository/releases</url>
    </repository>
    <repository>
      <id>jetbrains.3rdparty</id>
      <url>https://dl.bintray.com/jetbrains/intellij-third-party-dependencies</url>
    </repository>
  </repositories>

  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.0.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>compile</phase>
            <configuration>
              <target>
                <path id="j2sp">
                  <pathelement location="${project.basedir}/src/main/java"/>
                </path>
                <taskdef name="javac2" classpathref="maven.runtime.classpath" classname="com.intellij.ant.Javac2"/>
                <javac2 destdir="${project.basedir}/target/classes">
                  <src refid="j2sp"/>
                </javac2>
              </target>
            </configuration>
            <goals>
              <goal>run</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.jetbrains.intellij.java</groupId>
      <artifactId>java-gui-forms-rt</artifactId>
      <version>${intellij.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.jetbrains.intellij.java</groupId>
      <artifactId>java-compiler-ant-tasks</artifactId>
      <version>${intellij.version}</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

That's all for today, I hope this helped you, so that you don't struggle with it for as long.