Can we Change Maven default Directory(.m2) Name?

Question

As we know Maven Downloaded all Jars from repository to local machine in a default directory name .m2 and location of this directory in Windows machine(Inside User Folder) Or in Home directory in case of Linux machine. Now my question is that can we change the name of .m2 to myjars or some other name?

Answer 1

YES:

<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0
                  http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">
   <localRepository>${user.home}/.m2/repository</localRepository>
   <interactiveMode>true</interactiveMode>
   <usePluginRegistry>false</usePluginRegistry>
   <offline>false</offline>
   ...
 </settings>

• localRepository: This value is the path of this build system's local repository. The default value is ${user.home}/.m2/repository. This element is especially useful for a main build server allowing all logged-in users to build from a common local repository.

• interactiveMode: true if Maven should attempt to interact with the user for input, false if not. Defaults to true.

• usePluginRegistry: true if Maven should use the ${user.home}/.m2/plugin-registry.xml file to manage plugin versions, defaults to false. Note that for the current version of Maven 2.0, the plugin-registry.xml file should not be depended upon. Consider it dormant for now.

• offline: true if this build system should operate in offline mode, defaults to false. This element is useful for build servers which cannot connect to a remote repository, either because of network setup or security reasons.

Answer 2

Yes, you can do that. But make sure, you make the appropriate path change in the <localRepository> of your settings.xml present in the conf folder of maven home directory.