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

The problem with systemPath is that the dependencies' jars won't get distributed along your artifacts as transitive dependencies. Try what I've posted here: Is it best to Mavenize your project jar files or put them in WEB-INF/lib?

Then declare dependencies as usual.

And please read the footer note.

Answer 2

To install the 3rd party jar which is not in maven repository use maven-install-plugin.

Below are steps:

1. Download the jar file manually from the source (website)
2. Create a folder and place your jar file in it
3. Run the below command to install the 3rd party jar in your local maven repository

mvn install:install-file -Dfile= -DgroupId= -DartifactId= -Dversion= -Dpackaging=

Below is the e.g one I used it for simonsite log4j

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=/Users/athanka/git/MyProject/repo/log4j-rolling-appender.jar -DgroupId=uk.org.simonsite -DartifactId=log4j-rolling-appender -Dversion=20150607-2059 -Dpackaging=jar

4. In the pom.xml include the dependency as below

     <dependency> 
           <groupId>uk.org.simonsite</groupId>
           <artifactId>log4j-rolling-appender</artifactId>
           <version>20150607-2059</version> 
     </dependency>
   

5. Run the mvn clean install command to create your packaging

Below is the reference link:

https://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-3rd-party-jars-local.html

Answer 3

This is what I have done, it also works around the package issue and it works with checked out code.

I created a new folder in the project in my case I used repo, but feel free to use src/repo

In my POM I had a dependency that is not in any public maven repositories

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.dovetail</groupId>
    <artifactId>zoslog4j</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.1</version>
    <scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>

I then created the following directories repo/com/dovetail/zoslog4j/1.0.1 and copied the JAR file into that folder.

I created the following POM file to represent the downloaded file (this step is optional, but it removes a WARNING) and helps the next guy figure out where I got the file to begin with.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.dovetail</groupId>
    <artifactId>zoslog4j</artifactId>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>
    <version>1.0.1</version>
    <name>z/OS Log4J Appenders</name>
    <url>http://dovetail.com/downloads/misc/index.html</url>
    <description>Apache Log4j Appender for z/OS Logstreams, files, etc.</description>
</project>

Two optional files I create are the SHA1 checksums for the POM and the JAR to remove the missing checksum warnings.

shasum -b < repo/com/dovetail/zoslog4j/1.0.1/zoslog4j-1.0.1.jar \
          > repo/com/dovetail/zoslog4j/1.0.1/zoslog4j-1.0.1.jar.sha1

shasum -b < repo/com/dovetail/zoslog4j/1.0.1/zoslog4j-1.0.1.pom \
          > repo/com/dovetail/zoslog4j/1.0.1/zoslog4j-1.0.1.pom.sha1

Finally I add the following fragment to my pom.xml that allows me to refer to the local repository

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>project</id>
        <url>file:///${basedir}/repo</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Answer 4

If you want a quick and dirty solution, you can do the following (though I do not recommend this for anything except test projects, maven will complain in length that this is not proper).

Add a dependency entry for each jar file you need, preferably with a perl script or something similar and copy/paste that into your pom file.

#! /usr/bin/perl

foreach my $n (@ARGV) {

    $n=~s@.*/@@;

    print "<dependency>
    <groupId>local.dummy</groupId>
    <artifactId>$n</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1</version>
    <scope>system</scope>
    <systemPath>\${project.basedir}/lib/$n</systemPath>
</dependency>
";

Answer 5

What works in our project is what Archimedes Trajano wrote, but we had in our .m2/settings.xml something like this:

 <mirror>
  <id>nexus</id>
  <mirrorOf>*</mirrorOf>
  <url>http://url_to_our_repository</url>
 </mirror>

and the * should be changed to central. So if his answer doesn't work for you, you should check your settings.xml

Answer 6

I just wanted a quick and dirty workaround... I couldn't run the script from Nikita Volkov: syntax error + it requires a strict format for the jar names.

I made this Perl script which works with whatever format for the jar file names, and it generates the dependencies in an xml so it can be copy pasted directly in a pom.

If you want to use it, make sure you understand what the script is doing, you may need to change the lib folder and the value for the groupId or artifactId...

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

open(my $fh, '>', 'dependencies.xml') or die "Could not open file 'dependencies.xml' $!";
foreach my $file (glob("lib/*.jar")) {
    print "$file\n";
    my $groupId = "my.mess";
    my $artifactId = "";
    my $version = "0.1-SNAPSHOT";
    if ($file =~ /\/([^\/]*?)(-([0-9v\._]*))?\.jar$/) {
        $artifactId = $1;
        if (defined($3)) {
            $version = $3;
        }
        `mvn install:install-file -Dfile=$file -DgroupId=$groupId -DartifactId=$artifactId -Dversion=$version -Dpackaging=jar`;
        print $fh "<dependency>\n\t<groupId>$groupId</groupId>\n\t<artifactId>$artifactId</artifactId>\n\t<version>$version</version>\n</dependency>\n";
        print " => $groupId:$artifactId:$version\n";
    } else {
        print "##### BEUH...\n";
    }
}
close $fh;