Integrating Scoreloop to your Maven build

I’m a big fan of automated build process. Especially on Android where creating a release-ready package is a really multi step process: you need to compile, strip with ProGuard, dex, package, sign, verify and what not.

When it came time to integrate Scoreloop to our game, we had some problems. Scoreloops offers a nice UI ready for use. But this means you can just put it in a jar and use it like normal dependency, because UI’s need graphics, layout xml’s and other resources. Finding info on how to get this to work with Maven proved difficult. Thanks to Julien Donguy at Scoreloop for pointing me to Android Library Projects.

Here’s how you would go about adding Scoreloop to your Maven build:

Download the Scoreloop SDK and unpack it somewhere. Inside you’ll find two directories: ScoreloopCore and ScoreloopUI. ScoreloopCore contains scoreloop-core.jar which you can install to your local maven repository like any other jar:

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=scoreloop-core.jar -DgroupId=com.scoreloop -DartifactId=scoreloop-core -Dversion=2.4 -Dpackaging=jar

Next you want to create a zip file from the contents of the ScoreloopUI directory (so that AndroidManifest.xml is in the root of the zip) and rename that zip to scoreloop-ui.apklib.

We can then add that package also to your Maven local repository with command:

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=scoreloop-ui.apklib -DgroupId=com.scoreloop -DartifactId=scoreloop-ui -Dversion=2.4 -Dpackaging=apklib

Note the different packaging parameter.

Next you’ll add both of these packages as dependeciens to your pom.xml.

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.scoreloop</groupId>
            <artifactId>scoreloop-core</artifactId>
            <version>2.4</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.scoreloop</groupId>
            <artifactId>scoreloop-ui</artifactId>
            <version>2.4</version>
            <type>apklib</type>
        </dependency>

Now running mvn clean package should create an apk that includes all necessary parts from Scoreloop. You can see the apklib getting included with something like this:

[INFO] --- android-maven-plugin:3.0.0-alpha-11:generate-sources (default-generate-sources) @ YourGame ---
[DEBUG] Expanding: C:\Users\someuser\m2\repository\com\scoreloop\scoreloop-ui\2.4\scoreloop-ui-2.4.apklib into C:\ideaworkspace\examples\YourGame\target\unpack\apklibs\com.scoreloop_scoreloop-ui_apklib_2.4

We did experience problems with earlier versions of maven-android-plugin so we suggest using Maven 3 and android-maven-plugin 3.0.0 alpha’s.

Atleast for Intellij IDEA, there’s one more step to go. Apklib’s, unlike regular jar dependencies, are not visible inside IDEA, so if you start coding, you’ll find none of the classes from the scoreloop-ui.apklib available. To fix this you can add the ScoreloopUI as a module dependency inside IDEA:

• Select File –> New module.. –> Import module from external model


• Point the file explorer to the location where you unpacked ScoreloopUI.


• When it’s imported, select your game’s module and “Open Module Settings”


• Select “Dependencies” tab and click Add.. –> Module Dependency and select ScoreloopUI.

Now the sources for the UI classes are available to your IDE, and this doesn’t affect the maven build process.

From here on forwards you can follow the User Guide that comes with Scoreloop.

Comments and feedback are welcome as usual!