Managing native libraries with Maven

Question

Hi.

Is it possible to manage native libraries (.so) under maven?

We use some jars with dependences on external native libs, so I'm looking for some way to mavenize them.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I think that the "common" approach is to bundle the native libraries in platform specific JARs using classifiers (e.g. mylib-1.2.3-solaris.jar) on which you could depend like any other JAR with classifier:

<dependency>
  <groupId>my.group</groupId>
  <artifactId>mylib</artifactId>
  <version>1.2.3</version>
  <classifier>solaris</classifier>
</dependency>

And then, unpack them with the maven-dependency-plugin and the unpack-dependencies mojo.

Also have a look at this previous answer, the Wrapping a Native Library with Maven post and the section 5.5.3. Platform Classifiers of the Maven: the complete reference,