WKND: Project Setup

What you are building

WKND is Adobe's reference site — a fictional travel brand — and the tutorial builds it with the archetype, chapter by chapter. Working through it gives you a complete, realistic project rather than a toy. Each chapter has its own Git branch, so you can jump in at any point or compare your work against the reference implementation.

The chapters map onto the next ten days: project setup, component basics, pages and templates, client-side libraries, style system, a custom component, and unit testing.

Generating and building

mvn -B org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:3.2.1:generate \
 -D archetypeGroupId=com.adobe.aem \
 -D archetypeArtifactId=aem-project-archetype \
 -D archetypeVersion=XX \
 -D appTitle="WKND Sites Project" \
 -D appId="wknd" \
 -D groupId="com.adobe.aem.guides" \
 -D aemVersion="cloud"

cd wknd
mvn clean install -PautoInstallPackage

Note the ordering of what happens: Maven compiles core, runs its unit tests, builds ui.frontend with npm, copies the resulting clientlib into ui.apps, packages every content module, assembles all, then uploads and installs that single package to the instance on 4502.

The profiles worth knowing

• -PautoInstallPackage — build everything, install all to author (4502).
• -PautoInstallPackagePublish — same, but to publish (4503).
• -PautoInstallBundle -pl core — compile and hot-deploy only the OSGi bundle. Much faster, and the one you will use most while writing Java.
• -PautoInstallSinglePackage — install a single module's package rather than the whole all.
• Add -DskipTests when you are iterating and know the tests pass. Do not make it a habit.

When the first build fails

Three causes account for nearly all of them:

1. Wrong Java version. Check java -version and mvn -version agree and match what the archetype expects. Multiple JDKs on one machine is the usual culprit.
2. Maven cannot resolve Adobe artefacts. The archetype pulls from Adobe's public repository. A corporate proxy or a settings.xml with a restrictive mirror will break this with a confusing "could not resolve dependencies" message.
3. AEM is not running, or is on a different port. The install step POSTs to localhost:4502 using the credentials in the profile. A stopped instance or a changed admin password fails here — and the failure comes at the very end, after a long build.

Confirming it worked

Do not trust "BUILD SUCCESS" alone. Check three things:

• The repository: /apps/wknd exists in CRXDE Lite, with components and clientlibs beneath it.
• The bundle: at /system/console/bundles, search for your bundle symbolic name (something like com.adobe.aem.guides.wknd.core) and confirm it is Active. A bundle stuck at Installed means the deploy technically succeeded but your Java is not running.
• The site: /sites.html/content/wknd shows the generated site, and you can open a page in the editor.