Introduction

The Alfresco SDK™ - formerly Maven Alfresco SDK™, formerly Alfresco Lifecycle 3.9.1 - provides a fully fledged Maven support for Alfresco Content Services WAR, JAR and AMP project development. Being fully integrated with Maven it allows to both leverage the vast number of Maven plugins for your Alfresco project as well as integrated your project easily in Open Source and Enterprise development processes.

The Alfresco SDK™ is fully documented in the single components websites (see menu above). For official (Enterprise) support of this SDK please refer to the features and tutorials documented in the Official Alfresco Documentation.

How to Use the SDK

The easiest way to use the SDK is to create a sample project using one of the available archetypes (Platform JAR, Share JAR or All in One).

You can also use the Alfresco Maven Plugin directly on any JAR project.

SDK Versions

As of version 2.0, releases for the Alfresco SDK are available in Maven Central.

Maven Alfresco SDK 1.x versions rely on the Alfresco Artifacts Repository. For documentation on the Maven Alfresco SDK™ 1.x please refer to Maven Alfresco SDK 1.x

SDK Alfresco Compatibility

Please refer to the official Alfresco docs for details of SDK / Alfresco compatibility.

Alfresco SDK™ components

The Alfresco SDK relies on a number of components:

  • Archetypes providing sample project to kickstart your Alfresco development and boost it with best practices
    • the Platform JAR, a single project that customizes Alfresco Repository
    • the Share JAR, a single project that customizes Alfresco Share
    • the All-in-One, a multi-module project to customize and run all components
  • The Maven Alfresco Plugin to setup, build, test and run your customizations
  • The Alfresco Artifacts Repository provides backing for this SDK.

Pre-requisites

System prerequisites

No manual Alfresco download, application server or database is required. The Maven Alfresco Plugin will by default launch an embedded H2 Database along with an embedded Tomcat server. Advanced use cases can be configured to use external databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL or various enterprise databases. See the Maven Alfresco Plugin documentation for more information.

See details in the SDK pre-requisites page.

Rapid development with HotSwap Agent or JRebel

The SDK (as of 3.0) support true rapid development and IDE integration. To allow hot reload of Java classes the SDK leverages HotSwap Agent, a library which allows seamless reloading of classfiles. JRebel is also supported out of the box.

Check the SDK pre-requisites page to enable rapid development.

Project History