Maven POM file for installing multiple 3rd party commercial libraries

Question

I have a bunch of projects which are dependant on a set of commercial 3rd party libraries. We currently don't have a company repository so I have to install the libraries in my own local repo.

Running mvn install:installFile -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=<file> -DgroupId=<groupId> -DartifactId=<artifactId> -Dversion=<version> for each file is rather tedious. Could create a bat file, but is there a way to do this using maven?

I'm thinking a project for all the jars and a single pom file with all the group ids, artifact ids, versions and filenames and then the possibility of just running mvn install in that project, or something along those lines.

Is anything like this possible?

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Note: I'm using Maven 3, but a Maven 2 compatible solution would be nice too.

Answer 1

You can just create pom.xml with multiple executions of install-file goal of Maven install plugin. Assuming those files are already available locally somewhere (or you can download them using Wagon plugin).

  <project>
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>org.somegroup</groupId>
    <artifactId>my-project</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>

    <build>
      <plugins>
        <plugin>
          <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
          <artifactId>maven-install-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.4</version/>
          <executions>
            <execution>
              <id>install1</id>
              <phase>package</phase>
              <goals>
                <goal>install-file</goal>
              </goals>
              <configuration>
                <file>lib/your-artifact-1.0.jar</file>
                <groupId>org.some.group</groupId>
                <artifactId>your-artifact</artifactId>
                <version>1.0</version>
                ... other properties
              </configuration>
            </execution>
            <execution>
              <id>install2</id>
              <phase>package</phase>
              <goals>
                <goal>install-file</goal>
              </goals>
              ... etc

            </execution>
            ... other executions
          </executions>
        </plugin>
      </plugins>
    </build>
  </project>

So, with above pom fragment mvn package should do the trick.

There are good Maven POM tutorial and POM reference.

Answer 2

Recently discovered a new solution to this. Basically you can create a local repository within the project which can be checked in with the rest of the source code. Blogged about it here: http://www.geekality.net/?p=2376.

The gist is to deploy dependencies to a folder in your project.

mvn deploy:deploy-file
    -Durl=file:///dev/project/repo/
    -Dfile=somelib-1.0.jar
    -DgroupId=com.example
    -DartifactId=somelib
    -Dpackaging=jar
    -Dversion=1.0

And then simply let Maven know about it and use dependency declarations as normal through your pom.xml.

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>project.local</id>
        <name>project</name>
        <url>file:${project.basedir}/repo</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>somelib</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
</dependency>

Not extremely Maven'y, but it works and moving the dependencies to a company repository later should be quite simple.

Answer 3

Just to add to the correct example provided by @eugene-kuleshov:

1. Once you configure the maven-install-plugin with the goal install-file in your pom.xml file with multiple executions, one execution per external jar, you have to use these jars in your pom.xml as usual:

   <dependency>
       <groupId>org.some.group</groupId>
       <artifactId>your-artifact</artifactId>
       <version>1.0</version>
   </dependency>
   

   The maven-install-plugin only copies your external jars to your local .m2 maven repository. That's it. It doesn't automatically include these jars as maven dependencies to your project.

   It's a minor point, but sometimes easy to miss.

2. You do not need to include any <repositories> in your pom as long as you are installing the external jars to the .m2 repository (which is the default)