How to add a local non-maven project as a dependency for a maven project?

Question

I created a new Spring web app, and I'd very much like to use Maven to handle builds/dependencies. My problem is that the project depends on some existing local projects, and mavenizing them is not currently an option. Is it possible to depend on these projects without mavenizing them?

Answer 1

I think that the easiest way to do this is to deploy your local dependency to your local repository so that maven can use it as regular dependency.

To deploy local jar file into local repository use command line like:

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=<MY-FILE> -DgroupId=MY-GROUP-ID -DartifactId=MY-ARGIFACT -Dversion=MY-VERSION -Dpackaging=jar

If you have shared repository like Artifactory in your company you can deploy the jar there. Otherwise each developer will have to deploy in into his local repository. The good news it must be done only once.

EDIT.

Here is a way to define project-to-project dependency into pom.xml

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.mycompany.util</groupId>
        <artifactId>util</artifactId>
        <version>${com.mycompany.version}</version>
    </dependency>

That's it. Util is just yet another project into my workspace.