Can I add jars to maven 2 build classpath without

Question

Maven2 is driving me crazy during the experimentation / quick and dirty mock-up phase of development.

I have a pom.xml file that defines the dependencies for the web-app framework I want to use, and I can quickly generate starter projects from that file. However, sometimes I want to link to a 3rd party library that doesn't already have a pom.xml file defined, so rather than create the pom.xml file for the 3rd party lib by hand and install it, and add the dependency to my pom.xml, I would just like to tell Maven: "In addition to my defined dependencies, include any jars that are in /lib too."

It seems like this ought to be simple, but if it is, I am missing something.

Any pointers on how to do this are greatly appreciated. Short of that, if there is a simple way to point maven to a /lib directory and easily create a pom.xml with all the enclosed jars mapped to a single dependency which I could then name / install and link to in one fell swoop would also suffice.

Answer 1

A quick&dirty batch solution (based on Alex's answer):

libs.bat

@ECHO OFF
FOR %%I IN (*.jar) DO (
echo ^<dependency^>
echo ^<groupId^>local.dummy^</groupId^>
echo ^<artifactId^>%%I^</artifactId^>
echo ^<version^>0.0.1^</version^>
echo ^<scope^>system^</scope^>
echo ^<systemPath^>${project.basedir}/lib/%%I^</systemPath^>
echo ^</dependency^>
)

Execute it like this: libs.bat > libs.txt. Then open libs.txt and copy its content as dependencies.

In my case, I only needed the libraries to compile my code, and this solution was the best for that purpose.

Answer 2

You may create local repository on your project

For example if you have libs folder in project structure

• In libs folder you should create directory structure like: /groupId/artifactId/version/artifactId-version.jar

• In your pom.xml you should register repository

  <repository>
      <id>ProjectRepo</id>
      <name>ProjectRepo</name>
      <url>file://${project.basedir}/libs</url>
  </repository>
  

• and add dependency as usual

  <dependency>
      <groupId>groupId</groupId>
      <artifactId>artifactId</artifactId>
      <version>version</version>
  </dependency>
  

That is all.

For detailed information: How to add external libraries in Maven

Answer 3

For those that didn't find a good answer here, this is what we are doing to get a jar with all the necessary dependencies in it. This answer (https://stackoverflow.com/a/7623805/1084306) mentions to use the Maven Assembly plugin but doesn't actually give an example in the answer. And if you don't read all the way to the end of the answer (it's pretty lengthy), you may miss it. Adding the below to your pom.xml will generate target/${PROJECT_NAME}-${VERSION}-jar-with-dependencies.jar

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.4.1</version>
            <configuration>
                <!-- get all project dependencies -->
                <descriptorRefs>
                    <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                </descriptorRefs>
                <!-- MainClass in mainfest make a executable jar -->
                <archive>
                  <manifest>
                    <mainClass>my.package.mainclass</mainClass>
                  </manifest>
                </archive>

            </configuration>
            <executions>
              <execution>
                <id>make-assembly</id>
                <!-- bind to the packaging phase -->
                <phase>package</phase> 
                <goals>
                    <goal>single</goal>
                </goals>
              </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

Answer 4

Even though it does not exactly fit to your problem, I'll drop this here. My requirements were:

1. Jars that can not be found in an online maven repository should be in the SVN.
2. If one developer adds another library, the other developers should not be bothered with manually installing them.
3. The IDE (NetBeans in my case) should be able find the sources and javadocs to provide autocompletion and help.

Let's talk about (3) first: Just having the jars in a folder and somehow merging them into the final jar will not work for here, since the IDE will not understand this. This means all libraries have to be installed properly. However, I dont want to have everyone installing it using "mvn install-file".

In my project I needed metawidget. Here we go:

1. Create a new maven project (name it "shared-libs" or something like that).
2. Download metawidget and extract the zip into src/main/lib.
3. The folder doc/api contains the javadocs. Create a zip of the content (doc/api/api.zip).
4. Modify the pom like this
5. Build the project and the library will be installed.
6. Add the library as a dependency to your project, or (if you added the dependency in the shared-libs project) add shared-libs as dependency to get all libraries at once.

Every time you have a new library, just add a new execution and tell everyone to build the project again (you can improve this process with project hierachies).

Answer 5

For throw away code only

set scope == system and just make up a groupId, artifactId, and version

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.swinglabs</groupId>
    <artifactId>swingx</artifactId>
    <version>0.9.2</version>
    <scope>system</scope>
    <systemPath>${project.basedir}/lib/swingx-0.9.3.jar</systemPath>
</dependency>

Note: system dependencies are not copied into resulted jar/war
(see How to include system dependencies in war built using maven)

Answer 6

What seems simplest to me is just configure your maven-compiler-plugin to include your custom jars. This example will load any jar files in a lib directory.

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <includes>
                    <include>lib/*.jar</include>
                </includes>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>