Problems with Maven 2

Question

I recently started to use Maven2 in one of my Java web application projects. Now I had many issues with it, some times project fails to build for no apparent reason and then it suddenly starts to work when nothing was done at all to project. Or some times our project members must delete project from their harddrive and download project again from SVN. There seems to be many very odd bugs in Maven in eclipse, but there some issues I would like know if it is possible to solve this issues.

1) I have understood that Maven2 should be able to get dependencies for added jars, but when I add a new dependency in Eclipse, it fails when I build it, it says dependecies are missing. How can I make maven to download those missing dependecies automatically?

2) I have Tuckey UrlRewrite Filter in use, but public repositories have only old version of this dependecy, so when I use this old version (3.1 when I need 3.2). How can I include this to project? We have many programmers in this project, so setting up local repository would mean that all our programmers would have to install that local repository.

Answer 1

Now I had many issues with it, some times project fails to build for no apparent reason and then it suddenly starts to work when nothing was done at all to project. (...)

Ok and what is the point of this free rant? I use Maven and my builds are 100% reproducible, there are well known practices to follow to achieve this. Maybe you're just not following them. Anyway if you're not happy with it, what can I say, don't use it.

I have understood that Maven2 should be able to get dependencies for added jars, but when I add a new dependency in Eclipse, it fails when I build it, it says dependencies are missing. How can I make maven to download those missing dependencies automatically?

I think you misunderstood, Eclipse won't guess what Maven coordinates to add if you don't provide the required informations for them. Dependencies must be declared in the POM, either by editing the POM manually or by using m2eclipse wizards.

And if this is what you did (and if I misunderstood the question) then please provide the <dependency> declaration and the exact error trace.

I have Tuckey UrlRewrite Filter in use, but public repositories have only old version of this dependecy, so when I use this old version (3.1 when I need 3.2). How can I include this to project? We have many programmers in this project, so setting up local repository would mean that all our programmers would have to install that local repository.

This question has already been asked several times, see for example Maven, how to add additional libs not available in repo where I suggest two possible solutions (use a corporate repository like Nexus or a "file-based" repository, the former suggestion being the preferred one for a long term solution).