Deploying and using artifacts from a Maven directory repository

If a JAR library has to be included in the project's source code, it useful to create a directory repository next to the project's source code to store the library.

Deploying a library from the source code

Maven allows to redirect the target of the deploy command into a directory.

repositoryDir=some-dir
mvn clean deploy -DaltDeploymentRepository=snapshot-repo::default::file:${repositoryDir}

Installing an existing JAR-packaged library

For existing JAR files, Maven provides install plugin which allows to deploy existing JAR package to a directory repository. If you have a POM file, for the file, you will have to gather following information about your package.

• groupId: com.microsoft.sqlserver
• artifactId: sqljdbc4
• version: 4.2

Then just execute follwing command and Maven will create aprropriate directory structure, copy and rename the JAR file and generate POM file.

mvn install:install-file \
    -Dfile=sqljdbc4.jar \
    -DgroupId=com.microsoft.sqlserver \
    -DartifactId=sqljdbc4 \
    -Dversion=4.2 \
    -Dpackaging=jar \
    -DlocalRepositoryPath=${repositoryDir}

You should end up with following structure.

<repositoryDir>/com/microsoft/sqlserver/sqljdbc4/4.2/sqljdbc4-4.2.jar
<repositoryDir>/com/microsoft/sqlserver/sqljdbc4/4.2/sqljdbc4-4.2.pom

Using a directory repository in a project

By adding a directory repository into your project, Maven will look for library files in that directory. In case of, you are working with multi-module builds, put the repositories definition into the parent project's pom file.

1. Define a path to directory repository.

   <repositories>
           <repository>
               <id>Project repository</id>
               <url>file://${basedir}/<repositoryDir></url>
           </repository>
       </repositories>
   

2. Use the library as any other dependency.

   <dependencies>
           <dependency>
               <groupId>com.microsoft.sqlserver</groupId>
               <artifactId>sqljdbc4</artifactId>
               <version>4.2</version>
           </dependency>
       </dependencies>