Does it still make sense to use Maven when dependent jars are checked in with source code?

Question

We check all of our source code\'s dependent third-party JARs into source control along with our source code. When needed, we manually download updates to third party JARs and r

Answer 1

When it comes to dependency management Maven really can be quite valuable. As Mark O'Connor suggests, running a local repository manager would likely be better than checking the artifacts into source control.

There are many tools (like m2e in eclipse) that can help with dependency management and provide valuable feedback on which modules or dependencies require which other dependencies. Maven will also make sure to get the appropriate version of a dependency even if different modules depend on different versions of a given library. That will help prevent duplicate versions of the same jar showing up in your deployed project as long as they have the same group and artifact id.

Even for a very simple project I don't think I would resort to checking dependencies into the source control system.