Deploy Mule 4 Application To Anypoint Runtime Fabric Using Maven Plugin

Introduction

In CI/CD process, it is very common to use Mule Maven plugin to build and deploy application to the Cloudhub, on-premise private cloud like AWS, AZure, Google Cloud, etc. Since Mule 4, a lot of changes related to the deployment has changed, in particular, related to the Mule Runtime Fabric (RTF). Actually, RTF is a completely new infrastructure for Mule application deployment. I will cover more on that topic later. In this article, I am going to cover the following topics related to the deployment to Anypoint Runtime Fabric (RTF):

1. Prepare pom.xml setup to deploy mule project to Anypoint RTF
2. Encrypt password
3. Troubleshooting

If everything works, at the end, we should be able to achieve the following goals:

• deploy mule projects (assets) to Anypoint Exchange
• deploy mule projects to Anypoint Runtime Fabric

In order for mule maven plugin to work, we need change the following two files:

• pom.xml
• ./m2/settings.xml

The complete project for this article can be find at my github repository

Settings.xml

In order to deploy mule applications using mule maven plugin, we need to set the Anypoint credentials, which are the ones we use to login to anypoint portal (http://anypoint.mulesoft.com). The best way to do this is to add server information in the .m2/settings.xml as the following:

        
                
                      ExchangeRepository
                      gary_liu_client
                      {5XLgXNDBGBIHa99xNAyJ6gL+ZxyUiyIJNHWu0H7Ctew=}
                
        

The password is encrypted. To encrypt password we need to add another file namely: ~/.m2/settings-security.xml:

  {Vq5Aso1ZkO4HdJrUscJTZEii4BcFy+khGiGxDNVNgc4=}

The encrypt master password in the above is created by the following commands:

$ mvn --encrypt-master-password MasterPassword
{+4nnH6EW9HcHAHYBGnloFCAZZHSC4W3Xp9Zls0LvBqk=}

Once we encrypted the master password, we can encrypt the password to the anypoint portal as the following:

mvn --encrypt-password AnypointPortalPassword

For more details about the maven password encryption, you may refer to the following page: https://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-encryption.html

pom.xml

 4.0.0

 fea874ca-11d9-4779-b1ce-90d49f738259
 mule-maven-plugin
 1.0.2
 mule-application

 mule-maven-plugin

 
  UTF-8
  UTF-8
  3.2.3
  https://anypoint.mulesoft.com
  MC
  QA

  4.1.4
  gary-deployment
  100m
  500Mi
 

 
  
   
    org.mule.tools.maven
    mule-maven-plugin
    ${mule.maven.plugin.version}
    true
    
     
      ${anypoint.uri}
      ${anypoint.provider}
      ${deployment.environment}
      ${deployment.target}
      ${app.runtime}
      ExchangeRepository
      ${app.name}
      
       ${deployment.replica}
       ${app.cores}
       ${app.memory}
      
     
     mule-application
    
   

   
    org.codehaus.mojo
    properties-maven-plugin
    1.0.0
    
     
      initialize
      
       read-project-properties
      
      
       
        ${maven.properties}
       
      
     
    
   
  
 

 
  
   ExchangeRepository
   Corporate Repository
   https://maven.anypoint.mulesoft.com/api/v1/organizations/${groupId}/maven
   default
  
 

 
           ......
 
        ......

The details are explained in the next section. But one item I must point out here: <groupId>fea874ca-11d9-4779-b1ce-90d49f738259</groupId>. The groupId is your Anypoint platform organization ID.

Explanations

The configuration in both pom.xml and settings.xml are pretty straightforward. Few items worths to explain. First, what is the latest version of mule maven plugin? This can be found at: https://docs.mulesoft.com/release-notes/mule-maven-plugin/mule-maven-plugin-release-notes. Currently, the latest verson is 3.2.3.

Secondly, I use another plugin in addition to the mule maven plugin, namely, properties-maven-plugin. This plugin allow us to pass a property file to the pom.xml.

   
    org.codehaus.mojo
    properties-maven-plugin
    1.0.0
    
     
      initialize
      
       read-project-properties
      
      
       
        ${maven.properties}
       
      
     
    
   

Note that in the configuration, we put ${maven.properties} variable. This allow as to pass the property file as:

mvn clean deploy -DmuleDeploy -Dmaven.properties=src/main/resources/mule.rtf.deploy.properties

Thirdly, note that in the mule maven plugin, I use <server>ExchangeRepository</server> as shown below. The ExchangeRespository is the server defined in the ~/.m2/settings.xml

    
     
      https://anypoint.mulesoft.com
      MC
      QA
      qa-azure-rtf
      4.1.4
      ExchangeRepository
      ${app.name}
      
       1
       100m
       500Mi
      
     
     mule-application
    

The details for the parameters can be referred at: https://docs.mulesoft.com/mule-runtime/4.1/runtime-fabric-deployment-mmp-reference.

Publish Assets To Exchange

In order to deploy mule application to RTF using Mule Maven Plugin, we must publish the application (asset to Anypoint Exchange). To me this is extra step unnecessary. To publish an artifact (asset) to the Anypoint Exchange, we run the following command:

mvn clean package deploy -Dmaven.properties=src/main/resources/mule.rtf.deploy.properties

After it completes the publishing, you can verify the result by the Anypoint Port using the following web address:
https://anypoint.mulesoft.com/exchange/{groupId}/{artifactId}
Here is an my example:
https://anypoint.mulesoft.com/exchange/fea874ca-11d9-4779-b1ce-90d49f738259/mule-maven-plugin/

Deploy Application To RTF

Deployment to RTF could be slow and sometimes could take very long time if it failed. I think the plugin should be improved on this by using asynchronous deployment instead of waiting and constantly checking with the runtime manager. Any way the deployment to RTF can be done using the following command:

mvn clean package deploy -DmuleDeploy -Dmaven.properties=src/main/resources/mule.rtf.deploy.properties

Take Aways

The commands used in the process:

mvn --encrypt-master-password GaryLiu1234
mvn --encrypt-password GaryLiu1234
mvn clean package deploy-Dmaven.properties=src/main/resources/mule.rtf.deploy.properties
mvn clean package deploy -DmuleDeploy -Dmaven.properties=src/main/resources/mule.rtf.deploy.properties

Web address to check assets in the Anypoint Exchange in the Anypoint Portal:
https://anypoint.mulesoft.com/exchange/{groupId}/{artifactId} Key Considerations using the Mule Maven Plugin in the CI/CD:

• Make sure don't wait for the deployment to finish as it can take very long time
• There are rest API you can check the deployment process. You should use the APIs to check the deploy
• At the moment, anypoint-cli is not working for RTF