Maven 2 assembly with dependencies: jar under scop

Question

I am using maven-assembly plugin to create a jar of my application, including its dependencies as follows:

<assembly>
    <id>macosx</id>
    <formats>
       <format>tar.gz</format>
       <format>dir</format>
    </formats>
    <dependencySets>
        <dependencySet>
            <includes>
                <include>*:jar</include>
            </includes>
            <outputDirectory>lib</outputDirectory>
        </dependencySet>
    </dependencySets>
</assembly>

(I omitted some other stuff that is not related to the question)

So far this has worked fine because it creates a lib directory with all dependencies. However, I recently added a new dependency whose scope is system, and it does not copy it to the lib output directory. i must be missing something basic here, so I call for help.

The dependency that I just added is:

<dependency>
  <groupId>sourceforge.jchart2d</groupId>
  <artifactId>jchart2d</artifactId>
  <version>3.1.0</version>
  <scope>system</scope>
  <systemPath>${project.basedir}/external/jchart2d-3.1.0.jar</systemPath>
</dependency>

The only way I was able to include this dependency was by adding the following to the assembly element:

<files>
    <file>
        <source>external/jchart2d-3.1.0.jar</source>
        <outputDirectory>lib</outputDirectory>
    </file>
</files>

However, this forces me to change the pom and the assembly file whenever this jar is renamed, if ever. Also, it seems just wrong.

I have tried with <scope>runtime</scope> in the dependencySets and <include>sourceforge.jchart2d:jchart2d</include> with no luck.

So how do you include a system scoped jar to your assembly file in maven 2?

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

Edited: Sorry that i didn't realize alx also mentioned about the clean life cycle workaround.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-install-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>hack-binary</id>
            <phase>clean</phase>
            <configuration>
                <file>${basedir}/lib/your-lib.jar</file>
                <repositoryLayout>default</repositoryLayout>
                <groupId>your-group</groupId>
                <artifactId>your-artifact</artifactId>
                <version>0.1</version>
                <packaging>jar</packaging>
                <generatePom>true</generatePom>
            </configuration>
            <goals>
                <goal>install-file</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

Base on the solution provided by alx, you can execute the install file step at clean phase. but since the clean phase is not in the default life cycle, you have to execute mvn clean at the first time to ensure the jar is ready in the local repo.

ex: mvn clean; mvn package