Getting All Maven Dependencies

If you are running any static analysis tool for Java, you know how hard it is to get all dependencies from a client. This is especially true if the application uses Maven build. Most clients use Nexus, which makes it even harder to get libraries to compile.

During one such engagement, one of my team members was struggling to compile the code. And anytime you have compilation errors, many of the static analysis tools produce 0 findings.

That's when I sent this simple command line option to my team member, who in turn was able to ask the client to send them all the dependencies using this command. And this worked like a charm, we had all libraries required to compile the code, the tool was happy, we were happy and the client was happy as well.

So, here it is. Make sure you can compile the code without any errors.

From a command line within your project, run "mvn clean compile"

Next, once you have a clean compilation, run the command "mvn dependency:copy-dependencies". This will copy all the dependencies into the target\dependency folder.

Take a look at the target\dependency folder, you have all the libraries to compile and can now configure any tool to scan your code successfully.

Apache Commons CLI - A Simple Example

As the saying goes " Out of Sight, Out of Mind", I was unable to remember how often I had used the Apache Commons CLI API in my Developer days. Now that I mostly work on Security engagements, when I was reminding one of our Consultants to use command line options, I couldn't remember the name of Commons CLI.

As soon as I got back home from the client site, I fired up my laptop, and there it was the code written almost several years back which used the Apache Commons CLI API.

The best way to get access to these code examples is to blog here, and you have it handy anywhere in the world, right?

The Commons CLI has great documentation on its website. Take a look:

http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-cli/

Follow the steps below to get it up and running in a few mins:

1. Download Commons CLI from here:
http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-cli/download_cli.cgi

2. Create a simple Main class:

3. As seen in the above screen shot, use the org.apache.commons.cli.Options to specify the command line options. For mandatory options, use the .isRequired().

4. Add descriptions to each command line option.

5. Next, parse command line input with set options as shown below:

6. Finally, get the individual command line options using the CommandLine object. For the ones which are optional, check if the argument is available using the .hasOption method.

7. Now run the jar file from the command line and you are all set. If an an option which is required is not set, it will print the help message as shown below:

8. If all the required options are specified, you see a message as such:

That's all it is for using the Apache Commons CLI. Happy Coding.

Failed to execute goal com.github.searls:jasmine-maven-plugin

When you are running any Static Analysis tool for Security such as IBM's AppScan Source and HP's Fortify SCA, and you notice errors such as the following, the simplest way to solve this is to disable running your unit tests.

 [ERROR] Failed to execute goal com.github.searls:jasmine-maven-plugin:1.3.1.3:test (run-jasmine-unit-tests-external-min) on project your-project-name: There were Jasmine spec failures. -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR]

The code needs to be compiled and packaged, however there is no need for unit tests to run successfully for getting good results. So, at this point to get the static analysis tool running, use one of the following commands and you should be up and running.

To skip running tests, use one of the below commands:
 
mvn clean compile package –DskipTests or
mvn package –Dmaven.test.skip=true

Unrecognized or invalid command line argument '-disable-sourcerendering'

If you are seeing the following error while scanning your projects using Fortify Maven plugin, there is a simple fix.

[error]: Unrecognized or invalid command line argument '-disable-sourcerendering'
Fortify Static Code Analyzer 5.16.0.0042
Copyright (c) 2003-2013 Fortify Software

For command-line help, type 'sourceanalyzer -h'

[ERROR] Error invoking sourceanalyzer. Exit code: 1.
Verify your project settings and your SCA installation.

Open the file com.fortify.ps.maven.plugin.sca.ScanMojo.java, and replace the following code:

com.fortify.ps.maven.plugin.sca.ScanMojo

If (!renderSources) {
addArg(“-disable-sourcerendering");
}

With the following lines

If (!renderSources) {
addArg(“-disable-source-rendering");
}

Recompile, package, and install using:

mvn compile package install.

And rerun your scans.

Installing Maven Fortify Plugin

The Maven Fortify Plugin supports Maven 2.0.X, 2.2.X and 3.0.X versions. The Plugin provides functionality to translate, scan and upload using Fortify's Source Code Analyzer or SCA as it is commonly called.

The source code of the plug-in is available within the Samples folder of the fortify installation as shown below.

 

Make sure you have Maven installed.

If the Maven Fortify Plugin has never been installed, run the Maven clean package and install commands as shown below:

 Once the commands run, you should be able to see the jar successfully built.

At this point, you can browse the .m2 folder and see that the plugin has been installed in your local Maven repository.

Now that the plugin is installed, you can easily translate, and scan using Fortify on all your Maven projects. 

A few other posts on Fortify can be found here:

• Fortify – [error]: Build ID doesn’t exist.

• Maven Fortify Plugin - Getting Help