ClassNotFoundException with Maven dependency system scoped

Question

I am getting ClassNotFoundException and NoClassDefFoundError exceptions when I attempt to run my application using a maven defined dependency.

I added my maven dependency for the jar in question to my pom.xml file with the following declaration:

<dependency>
  <groupId>ldap</groupId>
  <artifactId>com.novell.ldap</artifactId>
  <systemPath>${local.lib.dir}/ldap.jar</systemPath>
  <scope>system</scope>
  <version>1</version>
</dependency>

The jar is correctly added to the Dependencies NetBeans project

But when I deploy the app the dependency is missing

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/novell/ldap/LDAPException

Answer 1

If you read the Maven documentation about this scope, it seems the expected behavior if your application server doesn't provide this library at runtime:

This scope is similar to provided except that you have to provide the JAR which contains it explicitly.

The provided scope states :

This is much like compile, but indicates you expect the JDK or a container to provide the dependency at runtime.

Not advised solution : add this library in the lib folder of your application server.
Cleaner solution : add this maven dependency in your maven repositories manually or with mvn install:install-file.
And remove the system scope of this dependency. It will use the default scope.

Answer 2

The system scope in maven is somewhat like provided, that is dependency is used only at compile time. It 's your responsability to make sure that jar is in the classpath at runtime.

Besides, the system scope is actually deprecated, consider other alternatives. see introduction to dependency mechanism