Maven: keeping dependent jars in project version control

Question

So, I have a war project with several dependent jars that are not available in any repository. Up until recently, I\'d been keeping them in src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/lib

Answer 1

At my company we are using Archiva, it is by far the simplest Repository Manager to set up and maintain. Especially if you go with the stand-alone based version. The each developer just sets up a profile in their ~/.m2/settings.xml file to point to the internal repository. If this is too much trouble, just put the internal repository in the in the pom.xml directly, but that is really bad practice. If the repository url ever moves, you have to update all your projects pom.xml files. Where as using settings.xml puts that burden on the developer to update their local configuration.

    
        
            internal
            
                true
            
            
                
                    mycompany.internal
                    Internal Release Repository
                    http://maven.mycompany.com/repository/internal/
                    
                        true
                    
                    
                        false
                    
                
                
                    mycompany.snapshots
                    Internal Snapshot Repository
                    http://maven.mycompany.com/repository/snapshots/
                    
                        false
                    
                    
                        true
                    
                
            
        
    


    
        
            internal
            guest
        
        
            snapshots
            guest
        
    

If setting up a Repository Manager is too much trouble, I think you need to reconsider the alternative of manually adding stuff to your local repository by hand, which is very error prone and time consuming. I run an Archiva instance for my personal development just because it is so easy to add the release plug in and manage versions without having to remember all the arcane -D options required to add stuff to your local repository on every machine. Copying the ~/.m2/settings.xml file is super easy and if it works on one machine it works on all of them.

Here is what you add to your pom.xml to enable automatically doing releases and pushing artifacts to a repository, in my case it is Archiva.

   
       internal
       Internal Archiva Repository
       http://maven.mycompany.com/repository/internal/
       default
       false
   
   
       snapshots
       Internal Archiva Repository
       http://maven.mycompany.com/repository/snapshots/
       default
       false
   

Then all you do is mvn clean release:prepare to automatically update your pom.xml version check in, tag and optionally branch the release and package all the artifacts, and then mvn release:perform to push the artifacts to the remote repository and check in the newly versioned pom.xml and you are ready for the next version to start development.

Snapshots got to snaphots and Releases go to internal automatically with the release plug in. You do have to configure the scm plug in as well, but that is just a few lines of configuration that you only have to touch once as well.

This is what it looks like for git, we are using Gitorious as our git Repository Manager

    scm:git:git://gitorious.mycompany.com:myproject/myproject.git
    scm:git:ssh://git@gitorious.mycompany.com/myproject/myproject.git
    http://gitorious.mycompany.com/myproject/myproject

An old desktop computer running Linux can handle repository duties like this for a development team without having to involve procurement and IT.