Is it possible to explicity tell maven to download and install an artifact to the local repository?

Question

Yes I read http://stackoverflow.com/questions/884808/ and other related questions, but I don't want to install the file manually. Actually I want to have something like a wget for maven, which fetches an artifact (with dependencies) and puts it somewhere or installs it in the local repository. Is the maybe a plugin available which does this?

Answer 1

I would investigate using the maven dependency plugin in combination with the maven install plugin.

• dependency: http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-dependency-plugin/usage.html
• install: http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-install-plugin/examples/specific-local-repo.html

Answer 2

You mean a way without adding a dependency to the pom.xml?

Because by adding a dependency to your pom.xml the maven dependency management automatically retrieves the artifact from the repositories you specified and installs it to the local repository.

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>foo</groupId>
    <artifactId>foo</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.1</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Answer 3

I'm not sure if there is a Maven plugin to handle this, but it is fairly simple to use the Maven Ant tasks for this purpose. You don't need to have Maven or a POM file, just Ant and this build file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="mvn-get" default="get" basedir=".">
    <property name="maven.ant.tasks.jar" value="${ant.home}/lib/maven-ant-tasks-2.0.9.jar" />
    <property name="maven.ant.tasks.bootstrap.location" value="http://apache.inetbridge.net/maven/binaries/maven-ant-tasks-2.0.9.jar" />
    <available property="maven.ant.tasks.jar.exists" file="${maven.ant.tasks.jar}" />

    <!-- This will download the "latest version" of the maven-ant-tasks if needed -->
    <target name="bootstrap_maven" unless="maven.ant.tasks.jar.exists">
        <get src="${maven.ant.tasks.bootstrap.location}" dest="${maven.ant.tasks.jar}" />
    </target>

    <!-- This will initialize all the maven ant tasks and download the requested artifact and its dependencies -->
    <target name="get" depends="bootstrap_maven" xmlns:artifact="urn:maven-artifact-ant">
        <path id="maven.ant.tasks.classpath" path="${maven.ant.tasks.jar}" />
        <typedef resource="org/apache/maven/artifact/ant/antlib.xml" uri="urn:maven-artifact-ant" classpathref="maven.ant.tasks.classpath" />
        <condition property="maven.repo.local" value="${maven.repo.local}" else="${user.home}/.m2/repository">
            <isset property="maven.repo.local" />
        </condition>
        <echo>maven.repo.local=${maven.repo.local}</echo>
        <artifact:localRepository id="local.repository" path="${maven.repo.local}" />
        <artifact:dependencies pathId="build.classpath" sourcesFilesetId="sources.id">
            <dependency groupId="${mvn.get.groupId}" artifactId="${mvn.get.artifactId}" version="${mvn.get.version}"/>
            <localRepository refid="local.repository" />
        </artifact:dependencies>
    </target>

</project>

Using a command line like the following will do what you want:

ant -Dmvn.get.groupId=commons-httpclient -Dmvn.get.artifactId=commons-httpclient -Dmvn.get.version=3.1 -Dmaven.repo.local=.

The inspiration for this came from this excellent blog post.

Answer 4

I use the following shell script to install a Commons Logging replacement, but in this case I already have the jars in hand:

#! /bin/sh

mvn install:install-file \
    -DgroupId=commons-logging \
    -DartifactId=commons-logging \
    -Dversion=99.0-does-not-exist \
    -Dpackaging=jar \
    -DcreateChecksum=true \
    -DpomFile=commons-logging-99.0-does-not-exist.pom \
    -Dfile=commons-logging-99.0-does-not-exist.jar

mvn install:install-file \
    -DgroupId=commons-logging \
    -DartifactId=commons-logging-api \
    -Dversion=99.0-does-not-exist \
    -Dpackaging=jar \
    -DcreateChecksum=true \
    -DpomFile=commons-logging-api-99.0-does-not-exist.pom \
    -Dfile=commons-logging-api-99.0-does-not-exist.jar

When you say "local repository" do you mean your own, as an individual, i.e., the one in ~/.m2 on unix, or do you mean your company repository? It's a different question. For the former, I'm with jitter; just add the entry to your pom. For the latter, check the repository server's docs for how to get a copy of central.

Answer 5

There is the dependency:get goal, as described at the dependency plugin manual.

This featured was requested at this jira ticket.

But I tried it with Maven 2.1.0 and it didn't work.