Question

I’ve inherited a Maven project. I’m just using it as a build tool and I’d like to disturb things as little as possible. I have to make a slight addition to one of the Java files and that addition requires that I include a new jar on the build path. How do I say: here a jar, just use it. It doesn’t have to be versioned or depended or downloaded or anything, just use it. Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: I found this, which actually works (!). If someone who knows about such things could read this answer and if it seems reasonably correct, please close this question as a dup.

EDIT: Nope, I misinterpreted my results. It doesn’t seem to work.

Answer 1

Here is how to proceed. Create a separate maven project inspired from the following 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 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>net.dwst</groupId>
    <artifactId>MavenMissingJars</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>Maven Missing Jars</name>

    <build>

        <plugins>

            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-install-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.3</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>dProguard-4.6</id>
                        <phase>generate-sources</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>install-file</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <inherited>false</inherited>
                        <configuration>
                            <file>toinstall/4.6/proguard.jar</file>
                            <groupId>net.sf.proguard</groupId>
                            <artifactId>proguard</artifactId>
                            <version>4.6</version>
                            <packaging>jar</packaging>
                            <generatePom>true</generatePom>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>

        </plugins>

    </build>

</project>

Assuming there is a /toinstall/4.6/ directory relative to your pom.xml and that a jar called proguard.jar is in there, calling this plugin will copy the jar from your local directory to your maven local repository.

This has to be executed once, that’s why it is preferable to have a separate small maven project for injecting missing jars.

Then, add a dependency in your project using the coordinates (artifactid, version and packaging) you have defined in the above pom.xml.