This wiki explains how to host maven repository for third party jars on Bitbucket (this is also applicable to other git hosts e.g. GitHub (with minor modifications); but I do recommend Bitbucket).

This repository includes rep-maker.py script that partially automates adding a large number of jars to maven repository and provides dependency info for pom.xml (described in the latter section).

Note: the proper way is to add the jars to the central maven repository; but this may not always be feasible especially for a large number of third party jars. Hence, the solution described here is a hack.

Problem

Not all of the jars are in the maven central repository, or in any publicly accessible repository.

p.s. For our case study we use RapidMiner which is currently build with ant, and contains a large number of third party jars which were not in publicly accessible maven repo (are now in this unofficial maven repo).

Solution

Maven repository is just a collection of folders/files so could be easily hosted on git. p.s. also see alternatives section towards the end.

Install jars in a local maven repository

Make a directory e.g. maven-repo with the following subfolders:

• jars should contain the jar files that you want the script to add to maven's repository
• repository contains local maven repository; for now it is empty later on will be populated by mvn

Script rep-maker.py takes two arguments: full_path_to_jars_dir lib_ver

Executing rep-maker.py that will create two files:

• mvn_commands contains commands that should be executed to populate maven's repository folder
• dependencies.xml that should be added to your pom.xml

Execute mvn_commands, it will add all of the jars to repository folder (don't forget to do chmod +x mvn_commands).

Create a project on Bitbucket; named e.g. <APP-NAME>_maven-repo; and add all of the files from maven-repo folder to it.

To point maven to it; add the following to your pom.xml (modifing appropriate values it to point to your project instead of mine):

#!xml
    <!-- Maven Repository on Git-BitBucket -->
    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>neil_rubens-repository</id>
            <url>https://bitbucket.org/neil_rubens/rapidminer_maven-repo/raw/master/repository/</url>
        </repository>
    </repositories>

Now you can add dependencies from dependencies.xml to your pom.xml

Creating Encapsulating Artifact

The number of dependencies could be quite large; we can create an encapsulating artifact with all of the dependencies. cd into encapsulate folder, then update the pom.xml with the dependencies; and repository location information. Then execute: mvn package, this is necessary since we need a jar to install (even though the jar is basically empty). Then to install the jar:

#!bash

mvn install:install-file -DpomFile=pom.xml -Dfile=./target/<YOUR-JAR>.jar -DlocalRepositoryPath=../repository  -DcreateChecksum=true

Tips

To start fresh; you can just delete everything from repository and re-run the mvn-commands

Other

For additional info see my post.

Keywords (for search engines)

maven aggregate module dependencies into one This issue could be solved by using maven's Project Aggregation instead of Project Inheritance. include modules encapsulate aggregate