Maven ant task. Transitive (pom) dependencies and https issue

Question

As you know, starting from 15 January 2020 Maven central repo requires HTTPS-only access. One of our projects is using Ant and Maven Ant Tasks (dependency management only). Yes, I know it's deprecated, but what is the other option for using pom.xml in old ant builds?

Looks like the Maven Ant Tasks have a bug if the dependency tree contains a link to pom, it always will be accessed through HTTP (despite locally configured https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2).

Any ideas on how to workaround the bug?

P.S. Yes, that is working configuration (i.e. worked through HTTP) and pom file exists with the correct parameters.

pom.xml

<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 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.abc</groupId>
  <artifactId>Test</artifactId>
  <version>4.5-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.vaadin</groupId>
            <artifactId>vaadin-client</artifactId>
            <version>8.4.5</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>central</id>
            <name>Central Repository</name>
            <url>https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2</url>
            <layout>default</layout>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </repository>
    </repositories>

</project>

Part of build.xml

<artifact:dependencies filesetid="maven.classpath">
    <pom file="../pom.xml" />
</artifact:dependencies>

Part of output

[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: com/vaadin/vaadin-client/8.4.5/vaadin-client-8.4.5.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 6K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: com/vaadin/vaadin-root/8.4.5/vaadin-root-8.4.5.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 40K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: com/vaadin/vaadin-parent/1.1.0/vaadin-parent-1.1.0.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 8K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: com/vaadin/vaadin-shared/8.4.5/vaadin-shared-8.4.5.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 7K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: com/vaadin/vaadin-server/8.4.5/vaadin-server-8.4.5.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 13K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: org/jsoup/jsoup/1.11.2/jsoup-1.11.2.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 8K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: com/vaadin/external/gentyref/1.2.0.vaadin1/gentyref-1.2.0.vaadin1.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 5K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: com/google/gwt/gwt-elemental/2.8.2/gwt-elemental-2.8.2.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 1K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: com/google/gwt/gwt/2.8.2/gwt-2.8.2.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 9K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: org/sonatype/oss/oss-parent/4/oss-parent-4.pom from repository central at https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 4K from central
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: com/google/web/bindery/requestfactory/2.8.2/requestfactory-2.8.2.pom from repository central at http://repo1.maven.org/maven2
[artifact:dependencies] Error transferring file: Server returned HTTP response code: 501 for URL: http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/google/web/bindery/requestfactory/2.8.2/requestfactory-2.8.2.pom
[artifact:dependencies] [WARNING] Unable to get resource 'com.google.web.bindery:requestfactory:pom:2.8.2' from repository central (http://repo1.maven.org/maven2): Error transferring file: Server returned HTTP response code: 501 for URL: http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/google/web/bindery/requestfactory/2.8.2/requestfactory-2.8.2.pom
[artifact:dependencies] An error has occurred while processing the Maven artifact tasks.
[artifact:dependencies]  Diagnosis:
[artifact:dependencies] 
[artifact:dependencies] Unable to resolve artifact: Unable to get dependency information: Unable to read the metadata file for artifact 'com.google.gwt:gwt-elemental:jar': POM 'com.google.web.bindery:requestfactory' not found in repository: Unable to download the artifact from any repository
[artifact:dependencies] 
[artifact:dependencies]   com.google.web.bindery:requestfactory:pom:2.8.2
[artifact:dependencies] 
[artifact:dependencies] from the specified remote repositories:
[artifact:dependencies]   central (http://repo1.maven.org/maven2),
[artifact:dependencies]   sonatype-nexus-snapshots (https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots)
[artifact:dependencies] 
[artifact:dependencies]  for project com.google.web.bindery:requestfactory
[artifact:dependencies]   com.google.gwt:gwt-elemental:jar:2.8.2
[artifact:dependencies] 
[artifact:dependencies] from the specified remote repositories:
[artifact:dependencies]   central (https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2),
[artifact:dependencies]   vaadin-snapshots (https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/vaadin-snapshots/)
[artifact:dependencies] 
[artifact:dependencies] Path to dependency: 
[artifact:dependencies]     1) com.abc:Test:jar:4.5-SNAPSHOT
[artifact:dependencies]     2) com.vaadin:vaadin-client:jar:8.4.5
[artifact:dependencies] 
[artifact:dependencies] 

Answer 1

We had the same problem that's why I debugged the jar to find out what might be the problem. Turns out that you can easily fix it by editing the pom-4.0.0.xml located inside the jar (relative path) org\apache\maven\project. Just change the urls to https and you should be fine.

Answer 2

Have you tried to install manually ?

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=<path-to-file> -DgroupId=<group-id> \
    -DartifactId=<artifact-id> -Dversion=<version> -Dpackaging=<packaging>

Answer 3

I was looking into a similar issue for building an old version of Thrift. Here's what worked for me. Edit the build.xml and add a remoteRepository in the artifact:dependencies block.

Example:

    <artifact:dependencies filesetId="build-dependency-jars" pomRefId="pom">
      <remoteRepository id="mavenCentral" url="https://repo1.maven.org/maven2"/>
    </artifact:dependencies>