Question

I was following these steps –
http://maven.apache.org/ant-tasks/examples/dependencies.html

and got through. I have a silly question that do I need maven to be set up on my system to be able to use it?

Answer 1

No. As per the installation docs:

Maven Ant Tasks and all its dependencies are packaged together as a single JAR file.

The below works fine for me with the tasks jar in $ANT_HOME/lib and no M2_HOME set, no mvn executable on my path, and an empty $CLASSPATH:

<project name="test1" xmlns:artifact="antlib:org.apache.maven.artifact.ant">
  <path id="maven-ant-tasks.classpath" path="lib/maven-ant-tasks-2.1.3.jar"/>

  <typedef resource="org/apache/maven/artifact/ant/antlib.xml"
           uri="antlib:org.apache.maven.artifact.ant"
           classpathref="maven-ant-tasks.classpath"/>

  <target name="get">
    <artifact:dependencies pathId="dependency.classpath">
      <dependency groupId="junit" artifactId="junit" version="3.8.2" scope="test"/>
    </artifact:dependencies>
  </target>
</project>

If I clear out 3.8.2 from my ~/.m2 repo directory, the artifact is downloaded properly.