Importing projects into Eclipse

Question

I have this simple question how to import whole project source into Ecplise so I can browse it easily? Specifically, I have downloaded Maven source code http://maven.apache.org/download.html and I just want to view it same as other projects in my Eclipse. I've tried to import it with use of two possible options (as archive and as a project) without luck.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Maven itself is a Mavenized multi-module project, Generally there are two ways to import a Mavenized project into a IDE like eclipse:

Pre-requirment:

• Suppose you have installed Maven 3 and setup environment variable properly.
• if you use Eclipse, you also need add M2_REPO to you Build Path -- Classpath Variable, check out here for how to setup. this tells Eclipse where to find jar dependencies stored in local maven repository.

Option 1 -- Import as Java Project:

• Open a command prompt and go to the extracted source folder, run mvn eclipse:eclipse and waiting for it finish, make sure it doesn't popup any message start with [ERROR], this will download all required jar dependencies from internet to you local maven repository and create .project and .classpath for Eclipse to use when doing import.

• In eclipse, go to File -- Import -- General -- Existing Project into Workspace, select the extracted source folder as root directory. This will import a group of projects into Eclipse as bunch of regular java projects (i.e. project icon inside Package Explorer watermarked with a capital J).

Option 2 -- Import as Maven Project:

• Alternatively, if yo got m2e plugin installed in Eclipse, you can directly import the extracted project folder, go to File -- Import -- Maven -- Existing Maven Projects, select the extracted source folder as Root Directory. This will import a group of projects into Eclipse as bunch of Maven projects (project icon inside Package Explorer watermarked with a Capital M).

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The maven repository versions are not uploaded in the exact format they are on disc (from where the the mvn deploy goal is run. I can think of 3 options assuming I understand your question correctly:

1. You can find the open source project if it exists and get all the source and project from there.
2. On an existing project, you go the dependencies, right click on one and select browse source. Not the same as having the show project here you can build and run however.
3. You can download the sources from the maven repo and then reconstruct the project. I'm not not sure how feasible this actually is and I have never tried it. I would probably find other ways before trying this.