Building JIRA from Source

Building a JIRA WAR file from a JIRA Source release

1. Ensure you have JDK 1.6 or higher and have a Subversion client installed.
2. Download Maven 2.1.0 from the Apache archives of the Maven website.
   We have not yet tested building JIRA from source using Maven 3 at this time.

3. Extract Maven to an appropriate location on your operating system. For example,
   On Windows, extract to:

   On Mac/Linux, extract to:

4. Set the M2_HOME environment variable. For example,
   On Windows:

   Alternatively, the Windows environment variables can be configured by choosing My Computer >> Properties >> Advanced >> Environment Variables.

   On Mac/Linux:

5. Add Maven's bin directory to your path. For example,
   On Windows:

   You can set this via My Computer >> Properties >> Advanced >> Environment Variables again if you wish.

   On Mac/Linux:

6. Install all of the following restricted third party (.jar) libraries to your local Maven repository (.m2), ensuring that you download the version specified below. All of these libraries are required to successfully build JIRA from source. If any of these libraries are missing, the build process will fail.
   Due to licensing restrictions, we are unable to distribute these third party libraries from Atlassian's public Maven repository. If you have built previous versions of JIRA from source, you may already have some of these libraries in your local Maven repository.

   Libraries	Maven groupId and artifactId	Version	Download URL
   activation	javax.activation:activation	1.0.2	http://repository.jboss.org/nexus/service/local/repositories/deprecated/content/javax/activation/activation/1.0.2/activation-1.0.2.jar
   jms	javax.jms:jms	1.1	http://repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/groups/public-jboss/javax/jms/jms/1.1/
   jmxri  and jmxtools	com.sun.jmx:jmxri       and com.sun.jdmk:jmxtools	1.2.1	http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/download-jsp-141676.html (Download 'JMX 1.2.1 Reference Implementation')
   jndi	jndi:jndi	1.2.1	http://java.sun.com/products/jndi/downloads/index.html
   jta	jta:jta	1.0.1B	http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/jta/index.html (Download 'Class Files 1.0.1B')
   mail	javax.mail:mail	1.3.2	http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javamail-1-3-2-138617.html
   ojdbc6	com.oracle:ojdbc6	11.2.0.2.0	http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/jdbc-112010-090769.html (Download 'ojdbc6.jar' under 'Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.2.0) JDBC Drivers')

   
   To install these restricted third party libraries:

   1. Download each one (from its link above) into a directory on your file system, for example, downloads in your home directory area.
      The jmxri, jmxtools, jndi, jta and mail libraries are downloaded as .zipfiles and before you can install these libraries into your local Maven repository, either:
      • a key .jar file must be extracted from them or
      • they need to be in .jar form.
      1. For jmxri and jmxtools:
         • On Windows:
           Use Windows Explorer to enter the downloads directory and extract the jmxri.jar and jmxtools.jar files from the jmx-1_2_1-bin\lib subdirectory of the jmx-1_2_1-ri.zip file.

         • On Linux:
      2. For jndi:
         • On Windows:
           Use Windows Explorer to enter the downloads directory and extract the jndi.jar file from the lib subdirectory of the jndi-1_2_1.zip file.

         • On Mac/Linux:
      3. For jta:
         • On Windows:
           Use Windows Explorer to enter the downloads directory and rename the jta-1_0_1B-classes.zip file to jta-1_0_1B-classes.jar

         • On Mac/Linux:
      4. For mail:
         1. On Windows:
            Use Windows Explorer to enter the downloads directory and extract the mail.jar file from the javamail-1.3.2 subdirectory of the javamail-1.3.2.zip file.

         2. On Mac/Linux:

   2. Once you have downloaded, expanded and renamed each of these libraries, install them into your local Maven repository. For example, in your downloads directory, enter the following commands:
7. Download the JIRA source archive from http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/JIRASourceDownloads.jspa.
   You will need to log in as a user with a commercial license to access this page.
   
   
8. Extract the JIRA source archive to a location of your choice. This will create a subdirectory with the name atlassian-jira-X.Y-source, where X.Y is your version of JIRA. For example, C:\atlassian-jira-4.3-source

9. Change directory into this subdirectory and build JIRA by executing the following Maven 2 command. For example,
   On Windows:

   On Mac/Linux:

   The build script will download several dependencies from Atlassian's public Maven repository. On rare occasions, however, the build process may fail and you may receive an error similar to the one encountered when an Atlassian product is unable to install a plugin from Atlassian's public Maven repository. This problem is caused by the JVM being unable to access its default 'cacerts' file, which contains a certificate that trusts Atlassian's public Maven repository. To resolve this problem: Try one of the solutions mentioned in the Confluence Knowledge Base article: Unable to Install Plugin Due to Maven SSL. If that does not resolve the problem, you may have a 'jssecacerts' file which does not contain a certificate that trusts Atlassian's public Maven repository. If a 'jssecacerts' file is present in your JVM, the 'cacerts' file may be ignored.

10. A WAR file called jira-webapp-dist-X.Y.war (where X.Y is your version of JIRA), will be built in the jira-project/jira-distribution/jira-webapp-dist/target subdirectory of your extracted JIRA source directory.
    
    For example, if the subdirectory created above was C:\atlassian-jira-4.3-source, the WAR file will be found in:
    C:\atlassian-jira-4.3-source\jira-project\jira-distribution\jira-webapp-dist\target\jira-webapp-dist-4.3.war
    
    An unpacked version of your JIRA source build can also be found in the jira-project/jira-distribution/jira-webapp-dist/target/jira-webapp-dist-X.Y subdirectory of your extracted JIRA source directory.
11. The WAR file generated can now be installed into your application server to run the JIRA application you just built. For more information, refer to the JIRA WAR Configuration Overview. For specific installation instructions, you can follow these procedures, skipping stages 1 and 3:
    • Installing JIRA on Tomcat 5.5
    • Installing JIRA on Tomcat 6.0

Developing using the IDE Connectors

Learn about the IDE Connectors from the IDE Connector Documentation.

Obtaining the source of JIRA's dependencies

When building JIRA from source, Maven will fetch the binary (compiled) dependencies that it requires automatically during the build process, so you do not have to do it manually (with the exception of the third party libraries mentioned above).

It is worth noting that JIRA's source distribution not only ships with JIRA's source code, it also includes the source of the internal Atlassian projects that JIRA depends on (e.g. atlassian-bonnie, atlassian-core, etc.). These internal Atlassian dependencies are also built from source when you build JIRA.

Other dependencies are available on Atlassian's public repository. The source of these dependencies is usually available on the library's website (try googling for the library name), or can be identified in the SCM information of the relevant library.

If you have any questions regarding the build process, please post to the JIRA Development Forum, which is monitored continually by the development community, and by Atlassian as often as possible.

Compiling Single Class Patches

If you just want to compile one class (perhaps a service), we have a step-by-step guide for how to do this in IDEA. See How to Make a JIRA Patch for details.