Install custom maven plugin from local jar into local repository with dependencies

Question

I have a maven plugin, which I have not uploaded to the central repository, but which I want to use in my projects.

What works

I can install

Answer 1

You just hit MINSTALL-110, which is going to be fixed in the next 3.0.0 release of the Maven Install Plugin. The core issue here is that you're installing manually a JAR file with the file parameter, the plugin detects that there is a POM inside, but only keeps the coordinate information (group id, artifact id, packaging and version), not the whole POM. As such, when the POM is installed, the dependencies aren't kept.

Indeed, if you take a look at the installed POM, you will see

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd" xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>de.wintercloud</groupId>
  <artifactId>jinja-maven-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>1.0</version>
  <packaging>maven-plugin</packaging>
  <description>POM was created from install:install-file</description>
</project>

which shows that the dependencies weren't retained. And if you take a look at the Maven logs in debug mode when running the install-file command, it will show

[DEBUG] Using META-INF/maven/de.wintercloud/jinja-maven-plugin/pom.xml for groupId, artifactId, packaging and version

A work-around waiting for version 3.0.0 is to specify the path to the POM file to install, along with the main artifact, by specifying the pomFile parameter. Run the following instead:

mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-install-plugin:2.5.2:install-file -Dfile=target/jinja-maven-plugin-1.0.jar -DpomFile=pom.xml

Then the full POM will be installed, not a generic stub.

With this change, the error

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal de.wintercloud:jinja-maven-plugin:1.0:renderjinja (default) on project sample: Execution default of goal de.wintercloud:jinja-maven-plugin:1.0:renderjinja failed: A required class was missing while executing de.wintercloud:jinja-maven-plugin:1.0:renderjinja: org/yaml/snakeyaml/Yaml

will not happen anymore. Maven will correctly download the dependencies and use them for the plugin.