Using Maven to download dependencies to a directory on the command line

Question

I need to download all transitive dependencies of a project to a directory on the command line without having a pom.xml file or other script. Ideally I woul

Answer 1

Apache ivy can be run as a standalone jar to download Maven dependencies. No POM required.

curl -L -O http://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=org/apache/ivy/ivy/2.3.0/ivy-2.3.0.jar
java -jar ivy-2.3.0.jar -dependency org.jclouds.provider rackspace-cloudservers-us 1.5.8 -retrieve "lib/[artifact]-[revision](-[classifier]).[ext]"

Produces the following files:

├── ivy-2.3.0.jar
└── lib
    ├── aopalliance-1.0.jar
    ├── asm-3.1.jar
    ├── bcprov-jdk16-1.46.jar
    ├── cglib-2.2.1-v20090111.jar
    ├── clojure-1.3.0.jar
    ├── core.incubator-0.1.0.jar
    ├── gson-2.2.jar
    ├── guava-13.0.jar
    ├── guice-3.0.jar
    ├── guice-assistedinject-3.0.jar
    ├── javax.inject-1.jar
    ├── jclouds-compute-1.5.8.jar
    ├── jclouds-core-1.5.8.jar
    ├── jclouds-scriptbuilder-1.5.8.jar
    ├── jsr250-api-1.0.jar
    ├── jsr311-api-1.1.1.jar
    ├── openstack-keystone-1.5.8.jar
    ├── openstack-nova-1.5.8.jar
    ├── rackspace-cloudidentity-1.5.8.jar
    ├── rackspace-cloudservers-us-1.5.8.jar
    ├── rackspace-cloudservers-us-1.5.8-javadoc.jar
    ├── rackspace-cloudservers-us-1.5.8-sources.jar
    ├── rocoto-6.1.jar
    └── tools.logging-0.2.3.jar

Answer 2

The first command almost gets you what you need - the POM of the dependency in question. Once you have that, you should not need a further project POM to run copy:dependencies:

Here's an example:

mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin:2.7:get -DgroupId=org.jclouds.provider -DartifactId=rackspace-cloudservers-us -Dversion=1.5.8 -Dtype=pom

mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin:2.7:copy-dependencies -f /path/to/m2/repo/org/jclouds/provider/rackspace-cloudservers-us/1.5.8/rackspace-cloudservers-us-1.5.8.pom -DoutputDirectory=/path/to/target/dir/don't/use/.

As pointed out by Everett Toews, you can use additional options of copy:dependencies to further refine what's downloaded, e.g. by adding -DexcludeTypes=test-jar to filter out the test JARs.

Answer 3

According to my understanding you want to download all dependencies artifacts to one folder on your local computer (without search your local repository). The simple way to do it is to create a simple pom.xml (yes, please create the pom) that will create the WAR file and will depend on your artifact. After mvn clean package your will find all dependencies artifacts (include transitive) in the lib folder of the WAR.

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">

    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>testwar</groupId>
    <artifactId>examplewar</artifactId>
    <packaging>war</packaging>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>examplewar Maven Webapp</name>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jclouds.provider</groupId>
            <artifactId>rackspace-cloudservers-us</artifactId>
            <version>1.5.8</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

</project>