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Asked: 2026-05-14T07:38:49+00:00

Quite new to maven here so let me explain first what I am trying

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Quite new to maven here so let me explain first what I am trying to do:

We have certain JAR files which will not be added to the repo. This is because they are specific to Oracle ADF and are already placed on our application server. There is only 1 version to be used for all apps at anyone time. In order to compile though, we need to have these on the class path. There are a LOT of these JARS, so if we were to upgrade to a newer version of ADF, we would have to go into every application and redefine some pretty redundant dependencies. So again, my goal is to just add these JARs to the classpath, since we will control what version is actually used elsewhere.

So basically, I want to just add every JAR in a given network directory (of which devs do not have permission to modify) to maven’s classpath for when it compiles. And without putting any of these JAR files in a repository. And of course, these JARs are not to be packaged into any EAR/WAR.

edit:

Amongst other reasons why I do not want to add these to the corporate repo is that:

  1. These JARs are not used by anything else. There are a lot of them, uncommon and exclusive to Oracle.
  2. There will only be one version of a given JAR used at anyone time. There will never be the case where Application A depends on 1.0 and Application B depends on 1.1. Both App A and B will depend on either 1.1 or 1.2 solely.
  3. We are planning to maintain 100+ applications. That is a lot of pom.xml files, meaning anytime we upgrade Oracle ADF, if any dependency wasn’t correctly specified (via human error) we will have to fix each mistake every time we edit those 100+ pom.xml files for an upgrade.
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I see three options:

    1. Put the dependencies in a repository (could be a file repository as described in this answer) and declare them with a scope provided.
    2. Use the dirty system scope trick (i.e. declare the dependencies with a system scope and set the path to the jars in your file system.
    3. Little variation of #2: create a jar with a MANIFEST.MF referencing all the jars (using a relative path) and declare a dependency on this almost empty jar with a system scope.

    The clean way is option #1 but others would work too in your case. Option #3 seems be the closest to what you’re looking for.

    Update: To clarify option #3

    Let’s say you have a directory with a.jar and b.jar. Create a c.jar with a Class-Path entry in its META-INF/MANIFEST.MF listing other jars, something like this:

    Class-Path: ./a.jar ./b.jar

    Then declare a dependency in your POM on c (and only on c) with a system scope, other jars will become “visible” without having to explicitly list them in your POM (sure, you need to declare them in the manifest but this can be very easily scripted).

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