Question

I googled this and it seems that no one has an answer, yet it seems like such an elementary thing that it should be possible.

I have the following project structure:

parent
   ---sub-project1
   ---sub-project2

sub-project2 needs to have sub-project1 as a dependency.

So I have this in sub-project2’s pom:

 <dependencies>
    <dependency>
         <artifactId>sub-project1</artifactId>
        <groupId>mygroup</groupId>
        <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    </dependency>

….

When I do this, Maven tries to dowload the sub-project1.jar file, which does not exist because it’s not ready for the repo yet.

I tried to put a <scope>import</scope> in the dependency, but that didn’t work either — same result.

So what do I have to do to get Maven to look at sub-project1 when building sub-project2?

EDIT Here are some pom snippets:

Parent:

<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          
    http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
   <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
   <prerequisites>
      <maven>2.0.9</maven>
   </prerequisites>
   <modules>
    <module>sub-project1</module>
    <module>sub-project2</module>
   </modules>
 ....

sub-project1:

<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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <parent>
    <artifactId>parent</artifactId>
    <groupId>mygroup</groupId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  </parent>
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <artifactId>sub-project1</artifactId>
....

sub-project2:

<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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <parent>
    <artifactId>parent</artifactId>
    <groupId>mygroup</groupId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  </parent>
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

   <artifactId>sub-project1</artifactId>

    <dependencies>
     ....
       <dependency>
          <artifactId>sub-project2</artifactId>
          <groupId>mygroup</groupId>
          <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
          <scope>import</scope>
      </dependency>
  </dependencies>

The error I’m getting when I got mvn clean install on the parent is:

[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Compilation failure

With a lot of classes/package not found errors

Answer 1

You should have a master pom at parent’s level, in which you will list the modules of your project.

  <modules>
    <module>sub-project1</module>
    <module>sub-project2</module>>
  </modules>

In each subproject you have to reference your parent:

<parent>
    <artifactId>parent</artifactId>
    <groupId>mygroup</groupId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</parent>

And you specify the dependencies between the project just as you did. I think you’ve missed some of the steps I’ve described.

Edit: you should issue your mvn clean install at the parent level.