use of Maven for Java web development - java

I am new to java web development and the book I am using to learn uses Maven and Tomcat for development. After searching some basics about Maven on internet all I know is that it is a tool for managing dependencies in project. I am using Netbeans 8 and every time I create a new project or clean-build an existing project Maven downloads lots of files. Is there any way I can keep a common place/repository for all my Maven projects which can be used locally? I have gone through some existing answers on stackoverflow but for me as a beginner they are difficult to understand.

Maven indeed has such a local repository (in .m2/repository in your home folder) where the files found to be needed are downloaded are automatically stored for future use.
The source repository - Maven Central - is very large, so you do not want to download everything as you will most likely not need most of it.
If you need to go offline, or want to be sure that everything you may need in your current build, you can run the dependency:go-offline target. You can then safely use the -o switch to maven to avoid network usage.

When you create a Maven project and build it for the first time, Maven will automatically create a local repository for you, downloading the necessary jars for your project to this location. From then on, all your maven projects will share this repository.
On Windows, the default location for your local Maven repository is
%HOMEPATH%\ .m2\repository
You will find this page useful: http://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-configuring-maven.html
You can also download 'Maven the complete reference' for free as a PDF from here: http://www.sonatype.com/resources/books/maven-the-complete-reference/download

Related

Maven Project Repository of Jar libraries

I'm trying to add Maven to already existing java project. It's been quite an adventure. I've read many questions here but I don't quite get it. The app I'm building is kinda modular so I'm loading many classes from URL so that the need of replacing the .exe (wrapped jar) file is at its minimum (Cuz once opened by any user I'cant update - replace the app (.exe)).
Since I'm using wide variety of libraries and the app Jar, hense the .exe, became too large - ~80MB, and slow to open from fileshare. Hense the need of Maven (or so I think). Since I installed Maven I had to add package statement at the top of every class, because before then there was not such thing, nor the need for it. Maven found the dependencies online and for the most part the process was not so time consuming, but the goal is to load the libraries from the project(app) folder /lib/. There I have all the libraries in jar files that I need. My question is: Is there a need of installing the libraries to local m2 directory (as I've read) since the app should always load them from the app folder? How do I configure the POM so the project/lib/ directory is recognized as a repo (or even is this the right approach), and load the libraries from the relative path of the project folder?
Thanks in advance to anyone able and willing to help!
Maven's core objective is to manage dependencies. You can add a dependency to your project, by configuring it in pom.xml, maven will download the dependency from the maven central repository & when building the project, maven can help you create a runnable JAR that have all your dependencies & code compiled.
Let's say in your current project if all of the dependencies are absolutely necessary, then even after migrating the project to maven, you're runnable JAR will remain the same size. There won't be any reduction in your application size. However, I would highly recommend migrating your project to any build tool like gradle or maven to manage project dependencies.

how to get all dependencies of a library?

I want to use the Google Firebase Messaging library in my Android Project. But my laptop just works offline and has not any access to the internet. I want to download FirebsaeMessaging library with all it's dependencies then add those files as aar library files to my project. First I want to get list of all dependencies of that library. How can i do this without internet? Thanks.
There are two approaches in general:
You download the complete dependencies with your online system, copy them into a libs folder and then create a project where you dependent on every jar in that libs folder.
You create a maven based project, build the project so that every dependency is copied to your local repository and copy the .m2 (local repository) to your offline machine. In case you want a gradle based project, #lance-java already posted a solution to that.
The first approach has the advantage that you have an isolated project with no dependency to the internet. Everything is in your project and explicit. You would have to check in your dependencies into your source control system like in good old times.
The second approach is good, if you are working in a team on that project. The export of your dependencies hat nothing to do with the project setup itself. Every programmer would find a "normal" project setup and dependency management.
If guess, that you want to go for the 1. way. If so, I would suggest to use ivy to download the complete dependency tree. Put the ivy-X.Y.Z.jar into your project beside a script that lists all dependencies - some sort of poor mans dependency management.
Example:
$ java -jar ivy-2.5.0.jar -dependency com.google.firebase firebase-admin 6.8.1 -retrieve "libs/[artifact](-[classifier]).[ext]"
This command would download the complete dependency tree for com.google.firebase:firebase-admin:6.8.1 and store the jars without version into the libs folder.
You could use my dependency-export plugin to export dependencies to a directory using maven directory conventions. You can then use the directory as a local repository for building offline.
As of Gradle version 6.1 the dependency cache is portable meaning that you can copy the dependency cache from one machine to another and the second machine should be able build offline. Perhaps this is what you want?
See this issue

Adding local jar (oracle driver) to Maven and Bamboo

I need to use the oracle database driver (oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver) for a project but Oracle does not have a Maven repository for it, so the only way that I have found is to download it onto my machine and then "install" the .jar to Maven as seen in this article.
However, now it is time to add the project to my work's Bamboo build server, but of course the build fails because it can't find the oracle driver.
My question is: how is this sort of thing generally handled? There doesn't seem to be a way to "add" a .jar to a Bamboo build and then point Maven on Bamboo to that .jar. Another alternative that I'm trying is putting the oracle .jar on an internal git repository but I don't know how to point Maven to pull a .jar from a git repository (my current understanding is that maven repos and git repos are different thing entirely).
Any tips or suggestions appreciated, thank you.
The usual way is to set up a Nexus/Artifactory on a server. This server is used for the built artifacts (your Bamboo deploys the EARs/WARs/JARs to it), to proxy external repositories (not necessary, but will speed up things) and to manage third party jars that are not available elsewhere.
In your settings.xml you just point to this Nexus/Artifactory and do the same for the Bamboo.

Using an external .jar file in a vsts hosted Maven build

I have a Maven project with several dependencies, all taken from the Maven repo. The project is hosted / stored in VSTS and uses CI. All bar one of the dependencies were available from the Maven Repository online so now I have to find a way of adding this .jar file to this project (and VSTS for the CI build) and making Maven recognise and use it.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks
If you don't have or want a Nexus/Artifactory, I would install the jar on every relevant account/computer with the help of the Maven install plugin (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/4955695/927493).
But let me stress that it is standard practise to have a Nexus/Artifactory running in the company - there are free OpenSource versions, and they are easy to set up. Furthermore, you have a canonical place for the artifacts you create yourself.
You should be able to create your own feed with the VSTS Packages Extension.
See here for instructions how to setup a feed and publish an artifact to the feed.
This is an alternative to Artifactory and is no extra cost to your existing VSTS.

Maven downloading from central repository

I am on Netbeans and don't know Maven much. Whenever I import, open some Maven project, it starts donwloading something from some central repository, sometimes huge. It downloads things in .m2\repository.cache\m2e. I have limited bandwidth and don't want this. How to stop this?
I have set Options>Java>Maven>Dependency Download Strategy to never. Also tried mvn -o install and mvn -o for offline. Not solved.
The Maven way is to get you what the project says it needs, but you have not already downloaded to your local repository.
The huge file is the list of what is actually available in Maven Central, and for some reason unknown to me it is downloaded on a regular basis. If you do it once, it should be kept for future sessions.
Maven will download all the dependency only once to the local repository and not again and again.
Weather you have limited or unlimited bandwidth you have to download it to execute your project.
Maven has a very modular architecture. That means the the thing you get when you download the Maven distribution is in reality small core functionality.
The rest is downloaded from a Maven artifact repository, like Maven Central (which is the default repo).
Note that this applies not only for dependencies (the library your project uses), but also your plugins (i.e. the stuff that compiles, packages, and otherwise builds the projects). Hence the large number of downloads.
Like the other answers said, if you don't delete your local repository it should eventually contain all the artifacts (dependencies and plugins) you need without re-downloading. The only exception are SNAPHSOT dependencies which can get re-downloaded periodically, depending what's in your POM and settings.
Ultimately, you have two possibilities:
If you have access to a higher-bandwith connection somewhere, you can build the projects while using it, and your local repo will still store the needed artifacts.
If you have several computers/configurations behind a local network, you can set up a Maven repository manager, like Nexus or Artifactory, and use it as a local mirror. Note that those still need to download the artifacts at first as well.
But there isn't much else you can do. "Maven downloading the Internet" is, unfortunately in your case, by design.

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