Adding JAR files to Maven build classpath without installing them

This page describes the process of adding JAR files to the build classpath without installing them into the local or remote repository. You typically would NOT want to do this unless absolutely necessary.

We will create 2 projects where the second project will depend on the first one.

Create the first project

Define value for groupId: : test
Define value for artifactId: : test
Define value for version:  1.0-SNAPSHOT: :
Define value for package:  test: :
Confirm properties configuration:
groupId: test
artifactId: test
version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
package: test
 Y: :

mvn install
This will create a test-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar file inside target folder.

Create the second project

cd ..
mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart

Define value for groupId: : test2
Define value for artifactId: : test2
Define value for version:  1.0-SNAPSHOT: :
Define value for package:  test2: :
Confirm properties configuration:
groupId: test2
artifactId: test2
version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
package: test2
 Y: :

cd test2

We will modify the second project and put in the dependencies to the first project and attempt to do a build. This build will naturally fail because test2 project does not have access to the jars for test project.

Modify src/main/java/test2/App.java

package test2;

public class App
{
    public static void main( String[] args )
    {
        test.App app = new test.App(); // this line contains a dependency on test project.
        app.main(args);
        System.out.println( "Hello World test2.App!" );
    }
}

mvn install

you should get the following errors.

[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Compilation failure
/home/verma/workspace/test2/src/main/java/test2/App.java:[13,5] package test does not exist
/home/verma/workspace/test2/src/main/java/test2/App.java:[13,24] package test does not exist

In test2 project folder do the following.

mkdir lib

cp ../test/target/test-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar lib

modify pom.xml file inside the test2 project.

<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>
  <groupId>test2</groupId>
  <artifactId>test2</artifactId>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>test2</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>3.8.1</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>doesntMatter</groupId>
      <artifactId>doesntMatter</artifactId>
      <version>doesntMatter</version>
      <scope>system</scope>
      <systemPath>${basedir}/lib/test-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar</systemPath>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

Finally

Retry the build and this time it should succeed.

mvn install

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 2 seconds
[INFO] Finished at: Wed Nov 18 21:56:33 EST 2009
[INFO] Final Memory: 27M/433M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------