Maven: add a dependency to a jar by relative path

Question

I have a proprietary jar that I want to add to my pom as a dependency.

But I don't want to add it to a repository. The reason is that I want my usual maven commands such as mvn compile, etc, to work out of the box. (Without demanding from the developers a to add it to some repository by themselves).

I want the jar to be in a 3rdparty lib in source control, and link to it by relative path from the pom.xml file.

Can this be done? How?

Answer 1

Using the system scope. ${basedir} is the directory of your pom.

<dependency>
    <artifactId>..</artifactId>
    <groupId>..</groupId>
    <scope>system</scope>
    <systemPath>${basedir}/lib/dependecny.jar</systemPath>
</dependency>

However it is advisable that you install your jar in the repository, and not commit it to the SCM - after all that's what maven tries to eliminate.

Answer 2

I've previously written about a pattern for doing this: http://brettporter.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/a-maven-friendly-pattern-for-storing-dependencies-in-version-control/

It is very similar to the solution proposed by Pascal, though it moves all such dependencies into a dedicated repository module so that you don't have to repeat it everywhere the dependency is used if it is a multi-module build.