Deploy Mule 4 Application To Anypoint Runtime Fabric Using Maven Plugin

In the CI/CD process, it is very common to use a Mule Maven plugin to build and deploy an 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, particularly 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 to change the following two files:

• pom.xml
• ./m2/settings.xml

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

In order to deploy mule applications using a 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 the server information in the .m2/settings.xml as the following:

<servers>
        <server>
              <id>ExchangeRepository</id>
              <username>gary_liu_client</username>
              <password>{5XLgXNDBGBIHa99xNAyJ6gL+ZxyUiyIJNHWu0H7Ctew=}</password>
        </server>
</servers>

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

<settingssecurity>
  <master>{Vq5Aso1ZkO4HdJrUscJTZEii4BcFy+khGiGxDNVNgc4=}</master>
</settingssecurity>

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

<!--xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?-->
<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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
 <modelversion>4.0.0</modelversion>

 <groupid>fea874ca-11d9-4779-b1ce-90d49f738259</groupid>
 <artifactid>mule-maven-plugin</artifactid>
 <version>1.0.2</version>
 <packaging>mule-application</packaging>

 <name>mule-maven-plugin</name>

 <properties>
  <project.build.sourceencoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceencoding>
  <project.reporting.outputencoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputencoding>
  <mule.maven.plugin.version>3.2.3</mule.maven.plugin.version>
  <anypoint.uri>https://anypoint.mulesoft.com</anypoint.uri>
  <anypoint.provider>MC</anypoint.provider>
  <deployment.environment>QA</deployment.environment>
<!--   <deployment.target>qa-azure-rtf</deployment.target> -->
  <app.runtime>4.1.4</app.runtime>
  <app.name>gary-deployment</app.name>
  <app.cores>100m</app.cores>
  <app.memory>500Mi</app.memory>
 </properties>

 <build>
  <plugins>
   <plugin>
    <groupid>org.mule.tools.maven</groupid>
    <artifactid>mule-maven-plugin</artifactid>
    <version>${mule.maven.plugin.version}</version>
    <extensions>true</extensions>
    <configuration>
     <runtimefabricdeployment>
      <uri>${anypoint.uri}</uri>
      <provider>${anypoint.provider}</provider>
      <environment>${deployment.environment}</environment>
      <target>${deployment.target}</target>
      <muleversion>${app.runtime}</muleversion>
      <server>ExchangeRepository</server>
      <applicationname>${app.name}</applicationname>
      <deploymentsettings>
       <replicationfactor>${deployment.replica}</replicationfactor>
       <cpureserved>${app.cores}</cpureserved>
       <memoryreserved>${app.memory}</memoryreserved>
      </deploymentsettings>
     </runtimefabricdeployment>
     <classifier>mule-application</classifier>
    </configuration>
   </plugin>

   <plugin>
    <groupid>org.codehaus.mojo</groupid>
    <artifactid>properties-maven-plugin</artifactid>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
    <executions>
     <execution>
      <phase>initialize</phase>
      <goals>
       <goal>read-project-properties</goal>
      </goals>
      <configuration>
       <files>
        <file>${maven.properties}</file>
       </files>
      </configuration>
     </execution>
    </executions>
   </plugin>
  </plugins>
 </build>

 <distributionmanagement>
  <repository>
   <id>ExchangeRepository</id>
   <name>Corporate Repository</name>
   <url>https://maven.anypoint.mulesoft.com/api/v1/organizations/${groupId}/maven</url>
   <layout>default</layout>
  </repository>
 </distributionmanagement>

 <dependencies>
           ......
 </dependencies>
        ......
</project>

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, however, a few items are worth explaining. First, what is the latest version of mule maven plugin? This can be found here. Currently, the latest version is 3.2.3.

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

<plugin>
 <groupid>org.codehaus.mojo</groupid>
 <artifactid>properties-maven-plugin</artifactid>
 <version>1.0.0</version>
 <executions>
  <execution>
   <phase>initialize</phase>
   <goals>
    <goal>read-project-properties</goal>
   </goals>
   <configuration>
    <files>
     <file>${maven.properties}</file>
    </files>
   </configuration>
  </execution>
 </executions>
</plugin>

Note that in the configuration, we put ${maven.properties} variable. This allows 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

<configuration>
 <runtimefabricdeployment>
  <uri>https://anypoint.mulesoft.com</uri>
  <provider>MC</provider>
  <environment>QA</environment>
  <target>qa-azure-rtf</target>
  <muleversion>4.1.4</muleversion>
  <server>ExchangeRepository</server>
  <applicationname>${app.name}</applicationname>
  <deploymentsettings>
   <replicationfactor>1</replicationfactor>
   <cpureserved>100m</cpureserved>
   <memoryreserved>500Mi</memoryreserved>
  </deploymentsettings>
 </runtimefabricdeployment>
 <classifier>mule-application</classifier>
</configuration>

The details for the parameters can be referred to here.

Publish Assets To Exchange

In order to deploy the mule application to RTF using the Mule Maven Plugin, we must publish the application (asset to Anypoint Exchange). To me, this extra step is 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 my example:
https://anypoint.mulesoft.com/exchange/fea874ca-11d9-4779-b1ce-90d49f738259/mule-maven-plugin/

Deployment to RTF can be slow and can sometimes take a very long time if it fails. I think the plugin should be improved by using asynchronous deployment instead of waiting and constantly checking with the runtime manager. 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 not to wait for the deployment to finish as it can take a very long time.
• There are REST APIs you can use to check the deployment process. You should use the APIs to check the deploy.
• At the moment, anypoint-cli is not working for RTF.