Is there any plugin that enables non-Maven dependencies loading/using?

Question

I need to use a third-party JAR library in my project (actually it's Dresden OCL for Eclipse) that is not provided as a Maven artifact. Instead, it's just a downloadable JAR file. Can I instruct Maven to use this JAR file the same way I'm using <dependencies>? I suppose that there should be some plugin for this purpose?

ps. I just don't want to add 35Mb of third-party binaries into my SVN repository.

Would be nice to have it configured this way:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>com.example</groupId>
      <artifactId>non-maven-dependencies-injector</artifactId>
      <configuration>
        <libraries>
          <library>http://www.example.com/something*.jar</library>
          <library>http://www.example.com/something-else*.jar</library>
        </libraries>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
  <plugins>
</build>

And this plugin would 1) download these JAR files, and 2) add them as dependencies into pom.xml. Maybe this plugin could store them somewhere in ~/.m2/temp/...

Answer 1

yes you can install it into your local repository with maven-install plugin

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=your-artifact-1.0.jar \
                         -DgroupId=org.some.group \
                         -DartifactId=your-artifact \
                         -Dversion=1.0 \
                         -Dpackaging=jar \
                         -DgeneratePom=true

If you want your other team members to be able to download this dependency without having to install it them thelves, you need to setup your own artifact repo, and deploy the artifact there with maven-deploy-plugin in same way as you installed it localy.

Answer 2

Yes. This (using non-Mavenized dependencies) is supported by the maven-external-dependency-plugin.

Example:

<artifactItem>
    <groupId>jwbroek.cuelib</groupId>
    <artifactId>cuelib</artifactId>
    <version>${cuelib-version}</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>
    <downloadUrl>http://cuelib.googlecode.com/files/cuelib-${cuelib-version}.jar</downloadUrl>
    <checksum>d03b6b960b3b83a2a419e8b5f07b6ba4bd18387b</checksum>
</artifactItem>

It can also extract artifacts from zip files:

<artifactItem>
    <groupId>mediautil</groupId>
    <artifactId>mediautil</artifactId>
    <version>${mediautil-version}</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>
    <install>true</install>
    <force>false</force>
    <downloadUrl>http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/mediachest/MediaUtil/Version%201.0/mediautil-1.zip</downloadUrl>
    <checksum>aa7ae51bb24a9268a8e57c6afe478c4293f84fda</checksum>
    <extractFile>mediautil-${mediautil-version}/mediautil-${mediautil-version}.jar</extractFile>
    <extractFileChecksum>e843cd55def75dce57123c79b7f36caca4841466</extractFileChecksum>
</artifactItem>