maven generating pom file

Question

I use maven 3.0.3 and have tried to generate pom for third-party jar like this:

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=cobra.jar -DgroupId=com.cobra -DartifactId=cobra -Dversion=0.98.4 -Dpackaging=jar -DgeneratePom=true

According to link below it should generate proper pom.xml and install artifact in the repo. http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-install-plugin/examples/generic-pom-generation.html

Meanwhile, it returns such a error:

[ERROR] The goal you specified requires a project to execute but there is no POM in this directory (D:\cobra-0.98.4\lib). Please verify you invoked Maven from the correct directory. -> [Help 1]

Why is it asking for pom.xml while it should generate pom.xml?

Answer 1

This is an old question, but was a serious PITA for me for a few minutes, so I thought I'd share:

I just ran into this problem, and I believe that the issue is probably platform-dependent. The real tip-off was that the solution from Cyril's answer wasn't working as expected: despite my specification of -DgroupId=com.xyz and -DartifactId=whatever on the command-line and the corresponding entry in the POM file, the jar was installed in the local repo under com/whatever.

This led me to experiment with quoting command-line arguments, and the eventual correct result from formatting the command-line like this (after deleting the POM file):

mvn install:install-file "-Dfile=cobra.jar" "-DgroupId=com.cobra" "-DartifactId=cobra" "-Dversion=0.98.4" "-Dpackaging=jar" "-DgeneratePom=true"

Some of the quoting is doubtless redundant, but better safe than sorry, right? I happen to be running Vista on this computer, and would not be surprised if this problem were specific to this OS version...by the way, this was with Maven v3.0.4.

Answer 2

Are you sure that you are executing the install-file goal? I checked your command and it works for me, but when I place a blank install :install-file (maybe you have this typo) the install goal would be used which needs a pom.xml.

Try to use the -X parameter to get more debug information:

 -X,--debug       Produce execution debug output

---

My system

Maven

c:\>mvn -version

Apache Maven 3.0.3 (r1075438; 2011-02-28 18:31:09+0100)
Maven home: C:\progs\apache-maven-3.0.3
Java version: 1.6.0_21, vendor: Sun Microsystems Inc.
Java home: c:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_21\jre
Default locale: de_DE, platform encoding: Cp1252
OS name: "windows 7", version: "6.1", arch: "x86", family: "windows"

Install Plugin

c:\>mvn -Dplugin=install help:describe

Name: Maven Install Plugin
Description: Copies the project artifacts to the user's local repository.
Group Id: org.apache.maven.plugins
Artifact Id: maven-install-plugin
Version: 2.3.1
Goal Prefix: install

This plugin has 3 goals:

install:help
  Description: Display help information on maven-install-plugin.
    Call
      mvn install:help -Ddetail=true -Dgoal=<goal-name>
    to display parameter details.

install:install
  Description: Installs the project's main artifact in the local repository.

install:install-file
  Description: Installs a file in the local repository.

For more information, run 'mvn help:describe [...] -Ddetail'

Answer 3

I found a bypass. You need to create a simple pom.xml like this :

<project xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.cobra</groupId>
    <artifactId>cobra</artifactId>
    <version>0.98.4</version>
</project>

It's not perfect but it's worked for me. If you find a better way to do that, I'm interested.

My config :

$mvn -version
Apache Maven 3.0.3 (r1075438; 2011-02-28 18:31:09+0100)
Maven home: /usr/local/maven
Java version: 1.6.0_20, vendor: Sun Microsystems Inc.
Java home: /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_20/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "linux", version: "2.6.32-25-generic-pae", arch: "i386", family: "unix"

$mvn -Dplugin=install help:describe
...
Name: Maven Install Plugin
Description: Copies the project artifacts to the user's local repository.
Group Id: org.apache.maven.plugins
Artifact Id: maven-install-plugin
Version: 2.3.1
Goal Prefix: install
...