Related
I just imported a project from subversion to IntelliJ IDEA 11 - it's a maven project. But I have a problem in maven library dependencies so that I can't include all maven dependencies automatically - IDEA shows dependency errors only when I open that class/ Thats what I get here:
So I want all dependencies to be added automatically - is that possible or do I have to go through all class files to identify and add maven dependencies?!
UPDATE: After doing some modifications I found how to resolve my problem in some way. Thats what I did:
but I think logically it will not include and check new dependencies ahead?!... Is there any settings area for this in intelliJ - auto export dependencies to classpath?
IntelliJ should download and add all your dependencies to the project's classpath automatically as long as your POM is compliant and all the dependencies are available.
When importing Maven projects into IntelliJ an information box usually comes up asking you if you want to configure Auto-Import for Maven projects. That means that if you make any changes to your POM those changes will be loaded automatically.
You can enable such feature going to File > Settings > Maven > Importing, there is a checkbox that says "Import Maven projects automatically".
If that doesn't help, then I would suggest to make a full clean-up and start again:
Close your project window (and IntelliJ) and remove all *.iml files and all .idea folders (there should be one per module)
Run mvn clean install from the command line
Re-import the project into IntelliJ and pay attention when it asks you to enable auto-import
IntelliJ 2016 Update:
The Import Maven Projects automatically setting has been moved to Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven > Importing in your IntelliJ preferences.
Fix before IntelliJ 14
File [menu] -> Settings -> maven -> importing and uncheck "use maven3 to import project"
ref: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-98425 (which may have a few other ideas too)
Fix IntelliJ 15+
Ran into this again, with IntelliJ 15 this time, which has no "use maven3 to import" option available anymore. The cause was that sometimes IntelliJ "doesn't parse maven dependencies right" and if it can't parse one of them right, it gives up on all of them, apparently. You can tell if this is the case by opening the maven projects tool window (View menu -> Tool Windows -> Maven Projects). Then expand one of your maven projects and its dependencies. If the dependencies are all underlined in red, "Houston, we have a problem".
You can actually see the real failure by mousing over the project name itself.
In my instance it said "Problems: No versions available for XXX" or "Failed to read descriptor for artifact org.xy.z" ref: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-128846
and
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-152555
It seems in this case I was dealing with a jar that didn't have an associated pom file (in our maven nexus repo, and also my local repository). If this is also your problem, "urrent work around: if you do not actually need to use classes from that jar in your own code (for instance a transitive maven dependency only), you can actually get away with commenting it out from the pom (temporarily), maven project reload, and then uncomment it. Somehow after that point IntelliJ "remembers" its old working dependencies. Adding a maven transitive exclude temporarily might also do it, if you're running into it from transitive chain of dependencies."
Another thing that might help is to use a "newer version" of maven than the bundled 3.0.5.
In order to set it up to use this as the default, close all your intellij windows, then open preferences -> build, execution and deployment -> build tools -> maven, and change the maven home directory, it should say "For default project" at the top when you adjust this, though you can adjust it for a particular project as well, as long as you "re import" after adjusting it.
Clear Caches
Deleting your intellij cache folders (windows: HOMEPATH/.{IntellijIdea,IdeaC}XXX linux ~/.IdeaIC15) and/or uninstalling and reinstalling IntelliJ itself. This can also be done by going to File [menu] -> Invalidate Caches / Restart.... Click invalidate and restart. This will reindex your whole project and solve many hard-to-trace issues with IntelliJ.
When importing the project, select pom.xml instead of the project directory. It should work.
Try to Re-Import the project from the Maven Projects panel in IntelliJ IDEA. It should download and configure all the dependencies defined in your pom.xml automatically.
If download doesn't work from IDEA for some reason, try mvn install from the command line and see if the dependencies can be fetched.
Of course all the required dependencies and any custom repositories must be defined directly in the pom.xml file.
For IntelliJ 2016-2.4 (and I believe other new-ish versions):
View > Tool Windows > Maven Projects
In the newly revealed toolbar, select Maven settings (icon of a toolset).
When this screen opens, expand the Maven menu and click 'Importing'
Here, click "Import Maven projects automatically." Also ensure that the 'JDK for Importer' option matches the JDK version you mean to use.
Click OK. Now go to the red dependency in your pom.xml, select the red lightbulb, and click 'Update Maven indices'.
What helped me:
Navigage:
Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Maven
Specify "Maven home directory" - the place you installed the maven
If certain maven modules are not compiling check if their pom.xml is on the "ignored files" list. In IntelliJ goto
preferences -> project settings -> maven -> ignored files
and check if the related pom.xml is ignored.
I had the same issue and tried all the answers mentioned here, none worked.
The simple solution is go to your project folder and delete all the .idea and .iml files and restart the IntelliJ ide. It works. No need to do anything with the settings.
Open IntelliJ Idea, Go to
File > Other Settings > Default Settings... > Maven (Preferences) > Importing or|
Preferences > Maven > Importing
Click on Enable Auto-import in the console.
When you create a new project you simply need to choose the option:
...
Import project from external model
Create IDEA project structure over existing external model (Eclipse, Maven...)
...
You'll find it pretty straight forward from there.
And in your case you can close your project and simply create a new one. Choose your project's directory, which will override it, making it a Maven project.
Importing Maven dependencies may not work if you import the same path several times. This may happen automatically after importing an existing maven project. I can't figure out why this happens, so I'm inclined to think it is a bug.
For example, if my project is
hibernate
src/main
src/test
the three paths may be imported as top nodes:
hibernate
src/main
src/test
If such is the case, the dependencies appear to be right, but they won't be used until you remove the superfluous paths (in this case, src/main and src/test). Once you do this, refresh and click Build > Rebuild Project. IDEA will pick up the dependencies.
A symptom of this problem is that IDEA warns you of a duplicated path when you manually check a library (second screenshot in the question).
There are several ways to re-read the dependencies in case you need it. If you go to the “Maven Projects” tab, there is a “Reimport All Maven Projects” icon at the top left of the tab. If you suspect IDEA became confused you can click on File > Invalidate Caches.
First check path Specified for User Settings file: in Settings -> Build,Execution,Development -> Build Tools -> Maven .
The field should have path of the settings.xml of your maven. Also the settings.xml should have correct path of remote repository.
Go into your project structure, under project Settings, Modules, select the dependencies table. For each dependency, change the scope from 'Test' to 'Compile'.
If in the lower right corner it says "2 processes running..." or similar, you may just need to wait for that to finish, since it may take time to download all the jars.
Reimport the project. If you install maven plugin you can use this.
Right click on the project -> Maven -> Reimport
I had a similar issue, in my case I am using a custom settings.xml which was not picked from IntelliJ.
Solution:
File > Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Maven: User settings file (chose here my custom settings.xml).
IntelliJ 2020.3.3
This one did it for me.
Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools.
Change "Reload project after changes in the build scripts":
from default "External Changes" to "Any Changes"
With this, it took a while for the project to rebuild but now I can see Maven dependencies in IntelliJ:
I ran into the problem that some subdependencies couldn't be resolved in IntelliJ 2016.3.X. This could be fixed by changing the Maven home directory in Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven from Bundled (Maven 3) to /usr/share/maven.
After that all subdependencies got resolved as in previous IntelliJ versions.
In my case, path for JAVA used by MAVEN was not set as JAVA_HOME as configured on the machine. Hence, it was not even trying to download the dependencies.
Steps I followed which solved this issue,
Checked for JAVA path , Settings >> Build >> Build Tools >> Importing >> JDK for importer. Pointed it to JAVA_HOME.
mvn clean install -U
Used above command to force the dependencies download.
Re imported Maven Projects
So I was also facing this problem in lots of my organisation's codebase. On addition to the answers suggested above, we can tweak around with the allocation pool memory of the jvm. This is because, the volume of the dependencies brought in large codebases may be overwhelming for the jvm for IDE to build the project completely. Hence tried increasing XMX value and it worked! Added -Xmx3072 to resolve the issue of "not building" my Java project in IntelliJ
Maven - Reimport did not work for me.
I have Spring project in STS(Eclipse) and my solution is to import project to IDEA like so:
1) File - New - Project from Existing Sources... - select directory - choose Eclipse.
2) Set Maven autoimport to true in settings.
3) Then right click in pom.xml and choose Add as Maven Project.
After this it has imported everything.
I had the similar issue with my macbook, just did a small change in pom.xml and it started downloading all dependencies:
Earlier dependencies were written as below for my windows machine:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
<artifactId>mail</artifactId>
<version>1.4</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
I just removed the <dependencies> and </dependencies> tags and it started downloading all the dependencies:
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
<artifactId>mail</artifactId>
<version>1.4</version>
</dependency>
I am not sure it will work for you or not.. but worked fine for me.
Thanks
Deleting the .idea folder from the project directory, and then re-importing the project as a Maven project is what worked for me.
Invalidate Caches worked for me:
File > Invalidate Caches
Checks:
Clear file system cache and Local History
Clear downloaded shared indexes
Then Invalidate and Restart
I solved this issue by updating my settings.xml file with correct mirror config, seems that intellij will try to download meta-data from repository every time the maven module imported.
Hijacking a bit to add what ended up working for me:
Go into the Maven Projects sidebar on the right edge of the IDE, and verify that your dependencies are listed correctly under your module there. Assuming they are, just ask IDEA to reimport then (the first button at the top, looks like two blue arrows forming a counter-clockwise circle).
Once I did that, and let IDEA reload the project for me, all my dependencies were magically understood.
For reference: this was with IDEA 13.1.2
I faced the same problem and tried everything suggested which did not solve the issue, I was using Intellij version 13.1.3
Finally after spending more than couple of hours trying to fix it, I decided to try an upgraded version and opened the project in version 14.1.4 which ultimately resolved the issue. I would think this as a probable bug in the previous version.
I hope this helps!
I was able to resolve it by removing unnecessary modules from Project Settings -> Modules list.
It turns out these additional modules were created automatically by IntelliJ IDEA when I created the IntelliJ project by importing from the project folder (instead of by opening pom.xml). Then, after declaring the project as Maven project, proper modules were created, and existing modules were conflicting with them. It is also possible to exclude those modules during project creation.
In my case, one of the modules was ignored for some reason.
To resolve that: Right click the problematic module and choose "Unignore Projects".
You might be working under a company's internal network.
If so, to download or add external Maven dependencies your settings.xml file under user/<username>/.m2 folder might need to be updated.
Contact your administrator to provide the right settings.xml file and then paste it into you .m2 folder.
I just imported a project from subversion to IntelliJ IDEA 11 - it's a maven project. But I have a problem in maven library dependencies so that I can't include all maven dependencies automatically - IDEA shows dependency errors only when I open that class/ Thats what I get here:
So I want all dependencies to be added automatically - is that possible or do I have to go through all class files to identify and add maven dependencies?!
UPDATE: After doing some modifications I found how to resolve my problem in some way. Thats what I did:
but I think logically it will not include and check new dependencies ahead?!... Is there any settings area for this in intelliJ - auto export dependencies to classpath?
IntelliJ should download and add all your dependencies to the project's classpath automatically as long as your POM is compliant and all the dependencies are available.
When importing Maven projects into IntelliJ an information box usually comes up asking you if you want to configure Auto-Import for Maven projects. That means that if you make any changes to your POM those changes will be loaded automatically.
You can enable such feature going to File > Settings > Maven > Importing, there is a checkbox that says "Import Maven projects automatically".
If that doesn't help, then I would suggest to make a full clean-up and start again:
Close your project window (and IntelliJ) and remove all *.iml files and all .idea folders (there should be one per module)
Run mvn clean install from the command line
Re-import the project into IntelliJ and pay attention when it asks you to enable auto-import
IntelliJ 2016 Update:
The Import Maven Projects automatically setting has been moved to Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven > Importing in your IntelliJ preferences.
Fix before IntelliJ 14
File [menu] -> Settings -> maven -> importing and uncheck "use maven3 to import project"
ref: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-98425 (which may have a few other ideas too)
Fix IntelliJ 15+
Ran into this again, with IntelliJ 15 this time, which has no "use maven3 to import" option available anymore. The cause was that sometimes IntelliJ "doesn't parse maven dependencies right" and if it can't parse one of them right, it gives up on all of them, apparently. You can tell if this is the case by opening the maven projects tool window (View menu -> Tool Windows -> Maven Projects). Then expand one of your maven projects and its dependencies. If the dependencies are all underlined in red, "Houston, we have a problem".
You can actually see the real failure by mousing over the project name itself.
In my instance it said "Problems: No versions available for XXX" or "Failed to read descriptor for artifact org.xy.z" ref: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-128846
and
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-152555
It seems in this case I was dealing with a jar that didn't have an associated pom file (in our maven nexus repo, and also my local repository). If this is also your problem, "urrent work around: if you do not actually need to use classes from that jar in your own code (for instance a transitive maven dependency only), you can actually get away with commenting it out from the pom (temporarily), maven project reload, and then uncomment it. Somehow after that point IntelliJ "remembers" its old working dependencies. Adding a maven transitive exclude temporarily might also do it, if you're running into it from transitive chain of dependencies."
Another thing that might help is to use a "newer version" of maven than the bundled 3.0.5.
In order to set it up to use this as the default, close all your intellij windows, then open preferences -> build, execution and deployment -> build tools -> maven, and change the maven home directory, it should say "For default project" at the top when you adjust this, though you can adjust it for a particular project as well, as long as you "re import" after adjusting it.
Clear Caches
Deleting your intellij cache folders (windows: HOMEPATH/.{IntellijIdea,IdeaC}XXX linux ~/.IdeaIC15) and/or uninstalling and reinstalling IntelliJ itself. This can also be done by going to File [menu] -> Invalidate Caches / Restart.... Click invalidate and restart. This will reindex your whole project and solve many hard-to-trace issues with IntelliJ.
When importing the project, select pom.xml instead of the project directory. It should work.
Try to Re-Import the project from the Maven Projects panel in IntelliJ IDEA. It should download and configure all the dependencies defined in your pom.xml automatically.
If download doesn't work from IDEA for some reason, try mvn install from the command line and see if the dependencies can be fetched.
Of course all the required dependencies and any custom repositories must be defined directly in the pom.xml file.
For IntelliJ 2016-2.4 (and I believe other new-ish versions):
View > Tool Windows > Maven Projects
In the newly revealed toolbar, select Maven settings (icon of a toolset).
When this screen opens, expand the Maven menu and click 'Importing'
Here, click "Import Maven projects automatically." Also ensure that the 'JDK for Importer' option matches the JDK version you mean to use.
Click OK. Now go to the red dependency in your pom.xml, select the red lightbulb, and click 'Update Maven indices'.
What helped me:
Navigage:
Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Maven
Specify "Maven home directory" - the place you installed the maven
If certain maven modules are not compiling check if their pom.xml is on the "ignored files" list. In IntelliJ goto
preferences -> project settings -> maven -> ignored files
and check if the related pom.xml is ignored.
I had the same issue and tried all the answers mentioned here, none worked.
The simple solution is go to your project folder and delete all the .idea and .iml files and restart the IntelliJ ide. It works. No need to do anything with the settings.
Open IntelliJ Idea, Go to
File > Other Settings > Default Settings... > Maven (Preferences) > Importing or|
Preferences > Maven > Importing
Click on Enable Auto-import in the console.
When you create a new project you simply need to choose the option:
...
Import project from external model
Create IDEA project structure over existing external model (Eclipse, Maven...)
...
You'll find it pretty straight forward from there.
And in your case you can close your project and simply create a new one. Choose your project's directory, which will override it, making it a Maven project.
Importing Maven dependencies may not work if you import the same path several times. This may happen automatically after importing an existing maven project. I can't figure out why this happens, so I'm inclined to think it is a bug.
For example, if my project is
hibernate
src/main
src/test
the three paths may be imported as top nodes:
hibernate
src/main
src/test
If such is the case, the dependencies appear to be right, but they won't be used until you remove the superfluous paths (in this case, src/main and src/test). Once you do this, refresh and click Build > Rebuild Project. IDEA will pick up the dependencies.
A symptom of this problem is that IDEA warns you of a duplicated path when you manually check a library (second screenshot in the question).
There are several ways to re-read the dependencies in case you need it. If you go to the “Maven Projects” tab, there is a “Reimport All Maven Projects” icon at the top left of the tab. If you suspect IDEA became confused you can click on File > Invalidate Caches.
First check path Specified for User Settings file: in Settings -> Build,Execution,Development -> Build Tools -> Maven .
The field should have path of the settings.xml of your maven. Also the settings.xml should have correct path of remote repository.
Go into your project structure, under project Settings, Modules, select the dependencies table. For each dependency, change the scope from 'Test' to 'Compile'.
If in the lower right corner it says "2 processes running..." or similar, you may just need to wait for that to finish, since it may take time to download all the jars.
Reimport the project. If you install maven plugin you can use this.
Right click on the project -> Maven -> Reimport
I had a similar issue, in my case I am using a custom settings.xml which was not picked from IntelliJ.
Solution:
File > Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Maven: User settings file (chose here my custom settings.xml).
IntelliJ 2020.3.3
This one did it for me.
Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools.
Change "Reload project after changes in the build scripts":
from default "External Changes" to "Any Changes"
With this, it took a while for the project to rebuild but now I can see Maven dependencies in IntelliJ:
I ran into the problem that some subdependencies couldn't be resolved in IntelliJ 2016.3.X. This could be fixed by changing the Maven home directory in Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven from Bundled (Maven 3) to /usr/share/maven.
After that all subdependencies got resolved as in previous IntelliJ versions.
In my case, path for JAVA used by MAVEN was not set as JAVA_HOME as configured on the machine. Hence, it was not even trying to download the dependencies.
Steps I followed which solved this issue,
Checked for JAVA path , Settings >> Build >> Build Tools >> Importing >> JDK for importer. Pointed it to JAVA_HOME.
mvn clean install -U
Used above command to force the dependencies download.
Re imported Maven Projects
So I was also facing this problem in lots of my organisation's codebase. On addition to the answers suggested above, we can tweak around with the allocation pool memory of the jvm. This is because, the volume of the dependencies brought in large codebases may be overwhelming for the jvm for IDE to build the project completely. Hence tried increasing XMX value and it worked! Added -Xmx3072 to resolve the issue of "not building" my Java project in IntelliJ
Maven - Reimport did not work for me.
I have Spring project in STS(Eclipse) and my solution is to import project to IDEA like so:
1) File - New - Project from Existing Sources... - select directory - choose Eclipse.
2) Set Maven autoimport to true in settings.
3) Then right click in pom.xml and choose Add as Maven Project.
After this it has imported everything.
I had the similar issue with my macbook, just did a small change in pom.xml and it started downloading all dependencies:
Earlier dependencies were written as below for my windows machine:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
<artifactId>mail</artifactId>
<version>1.4</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
I just removed the <dependencies> and </dependencies> tags and it started downloading all the dependencies:
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
<artifactId>mail</artifactId>
<version>1.4</version>
</dependency>
I am not sure it will work for you or not.. but worked fine for me.
Thanks
Deleting the .idea folder from the project directory, and then re-importing the project as a Maven project is what worked for me.
Invalidate Caches worked for me:
File > Invalidate Caches
Checks:
Clear file system cache and Local History
Clear downloaded shared indexes
Then Invalidate and Restart
I solved this issue by updating my settings.xml file with correct mirror config, seems that intellij will try to download meta-data from repository every time the maven module imported.
Hijacking a bit to add what ended up working for me:
Go into the Maven Projects sidebar on the right edge of the IDE, and verify that your dependencies are listed correctly under your module there. Assuming they are, just ask IDEA to reimport then (the first button at the top, looks like two blue arrows forming a counter-clockwise circle).
Once I did that, and let IDEA reload the project for me, all my dependencies were magically understood.
For reference: this was with IDEA 13.1.2
I faced the same problem and tried everything suggested which did not solve the issue, I was using Intellij version 13.1.3
Finally after spending more than couple of hours trying to fix it, I decided to try an upgraded version and opened the project in version 14.1.4 which ultimately resolved the issue. I would think this as a probable bug in the previous version.
I hope this helps!
I was able to resolve it by removing unnecessary modules from Project Settings -> Modules list.
It turns out these additional modules were created automatically by IntelliJ IDEA when I created the IntelliJ project by importing from the project folder (instead of by opening pom.xml). Then, after declaring the project as Maven project, proper modules were created, and existing modules were conflicting with them. It is also possible to exclude those modules during project creation.
In my case, one of the modules was ignored for some reason.
To resolve that: Right click the problematic module and choose "Unignore Projects".
You might be working under a company's internal network.
If so, to download or add external Maven dependencies your settings.xml file under user/<username>/.m2 folder might need to be updated.
Contact your administrator to provide the right settings.xml file and then paste it into you .m2 folder.
I am using the eclipse kepler version 4.3.2. I have recently checked out the java project from the svn repository. I have checked the project contains the pom.xml file but I am not able to build the project in the eclipse. I shows the various build errors such as
Missing artifact org.springframework:spring-web:jar:3.0.5.RELEASE pom.xml /RAWS line 1 Maven Dependency Problem
Note:
I have the eclipse maven plugin installed in the eclipse because I can see the maven option in the dialogue box in the window->preferences option
How should I solve this issue ?Do I need to download the maven?How should I solved the issue of build errors? Do I need to download the new plugin ?
Can anybody tell me the steps than it would be helpful?
Update your maven project orelse Open the pom.xml with Maven POM Editor and you will find the Dependencies tab click that and add the required JARs in to your project
As the desired jar is in MavenCentral, it is likely that your MavenCentral connection is not working. Either you replaced the MavenCentral url (in the settings.xml or your pom) or you live behind a proxy and MavenCentral cannot be seen.
In the "Maven repositories" view in Eclipse, you can see the indices of the repositories. Check whether central has an index there (after possibly applying "Update Index" on it).
I think you should give us more informations about your problem.
Maybe you could post some snippets of your pom.xml or tell us which repository you try to access?
It's also possible that your maven version is too old/new.
If i want to convert an EAR project a maven project , do i need to add the module in the deployment assembly as maven dependency or just use the convert in m2eclipse without any further configuration.
Me personally I wouldn't attempt any kind of conversion of an existing project. I would add the poms, make sure that mvn clean install works on the command prompt and then create a new mavenized Eclipse project from the poms.
The main reason is that you current project settings are effectively wrong when you switch to Maven - the Maven poms are the truth and what feeds the Eclipse project setup, so you really do not want to make your life difficult and work against m2eclipse - let it do the project creation for you. Fresh.
You can install m2eclipse and then do the following as well.
Go to the project menu (right click on Package Explorer) > Configure > Convert to Maven Project
Open the pom.xml and right-click and choose Run As -> Maven Clean. Similarly Choose Run As -> Maven Install.
Note : Please ensure that your eclipse project settings are correct and classpath libraries are not absolute and you don't have any project specific environment variables defined in your workspace. Please take a backup of your project before you do this.This is to ensure we don't mess up the current stable project configurations. Once m2eclipse generates the pom.xml for your project, you can update and make changes to it to
fully obtain a mavenized ear build. hope this helps
You can also try creating new maven project with archetype selection of "jboss-javaee6-ear" and follow the similar structure for your project. Most probably you will need parent Pom and child poms per each module (ejb, war, jar etc). There are other few similar approach but almost all of them requires you to have mulitple POMs
maven-ear-plugin and JBoss AS 7
You can also go through all the examples for maven ear plugin to find settings suitable for you
http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-ear-plugin/
I ended up ditching ear for war :) single POM and even ditched the JBOss for tomcat/jetty :)
If you want to convert your existing eclipse dependencies into Maven dependencies, you can try the JBoss Tools (JBT) Maven integration feature, which contains an experimental conversion wizard, plugged into m2e's conversion process : http://docs.jboss.org/tools/whatsnew/maven/maven-news-4.0.0.Beta1.html.
So, all you have to do is, as Keerthi explained, right-click on your project and Configure > Convert to Maven...
If your dependencies already are maven artifacts, it should work easily. If not, you'll need to convert them to Maven (if they're workspace projects) or make them available in your maven enterprise repository, before converting the EAR project.
JBT (requires Eclipse JavaEE) can be installed from http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/stable/kepler/ or from the Eclipse Marketplace (See https://marketplace.eclipse.org/search/site/jboss%2520tools)
I have just downloaded a project from github, it has a pom.xml and is missing many dependencies.
I installed m2e Maven integration in Eclipse plugin but now what do I do? It's installed and seems to be working but how do I download the dependencies now?
You checkout the git files to a location different from your Eclipse workspace.
Start Eclipse on a clean workspace and install m2e. (I usually install m2e-wtp to get web projects)
Use File -> Import -> Existing Maven projects.
Point to the pom.xml you want to use in the files checked out above.
Wait while Eclipse downloads half the Internet.
Ready.
Right click on your project, run as -> maven install.
If you can't see these, you either incorrectly installed m2e, or you need to import the project as a maven project.
In that case, delete the project from your workspace (do not check the "delete contents on disk"). Right click in the project explorer and click on import... From that dialog, you can select existing maven projects, where you need to navigate to the highest directory containing a pom.xml file.
Also, if you have maven installed on your computer (not m2e in eclipse), you can open the directory that contains the pom.xml and just type mvn clean install. This will build your project.
If you get a "Build success" message, you'll know that the dependencies have been fetched correctly.
In eclipse, You have to convert your project to a maven project. right click on your project -> maven (or configure) -> convert to maven project (or enable dependencies management).
This should update your dependencies automatically, if it is not the case then right click your project -> maven -> update project (or update dependencies, it depends on the verion of m2e you are using).
It should be enough to build the project. The dependencies should be downloaded during the build.
Pom.xml files are used for Maven projects.
Depending on your Eclipse version, maybe it's not compatible with Maven out of the box. If not, you can install a Maven plugin (like m2e) so that the project can be viewed as a Maven project.
Maven will do the dependency management (if pom.xml file is configured properly)
When you right click on your project->Run As-> Maven install it will download all the dependencies that it does not have already in your local repository.