Make Maven to copy dependencies into target/lib

Question

How do I get my project's runtime dependencies copied into the target/lib folder?

As it is right now, after mvn clean install the target folder contains only my project's jar, but none of the runtime dependencies.

Solution 1

This works for me:

<project>
  ...
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <id>qa</id>
      <build>
        <plugins>
          <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
            <executions>
              <execution>
                <phase>install</phase>
                <goals>
                  <goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
                </goals>
                <configuration>
                  <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/lib</outputDirectory>
                </configuration>
              </execution>
            </executions>
          </plugin>
        </plugins>
      </build>
    </profile>
  </profiles>
</project>

Solution 2

mvn install dependency:copy-dependencies 

Works for me with dependencies directory created in target folder. Like it!

Solution 3

The best approach depends on what you want to do:

• If you want to bundle your dependencies into a WAR or EAR file, then simply set the packaging type of your project to EAR or WAR. Maven will bundle the dependencies into the right location.
• If you want to create a JAR file that includes your code along with all your dependencies, then use the assembly plugin with the jar-with-dependencies descriptor. Maven will generate a complete JAR file with all your classes plus the classes from any dependencies.
• If you want to simply pull your dependencies into the target directory interactively, then use the dependency plugin to copy your files in.
• If you want to pull in the dependencies for some other type of processing, then you will probably need to generate your own plugin. There are APIs to get the list of dependencies, and their location on disk. You will have to take it from there...

Solution 4

Take a look at the Maven dependency plugin, specifically, the dependency:copy-dependencies goal. Take a look at the example under the heading The dependency:copy-dependencies mojo. Set the outputDirectory configuration property to ${basedir}/target/lib (I believe, you'll have to test).

Hope this helps.

Solution 5

If you want to do this on an occasional basis (and thus don't want to change your POM), try this command-line:

mvn dependency:copy-dependencies -DoutputDirectory=${project.build.directory}/lib

If you omit the last argument, the dependences are placed in target/dependencies.

View more solutions

Comments

[Alexandre Victoor]

Why do you need this ? What is the type of your maven project ? jar ?

[Michael]

The type of my maven project is JAR. I need this because there are a lot of dependencies and I'm trying deploy the jar as an executable.

[demaniak]

Caution with assemblies - if you have overlapping packages/classes between the deps, you will probably have a bad time.

[Cuga]

Alternatively, you could use ${project.build.directory}/lib rather than ${basedir}/target/lib

[P.M]

maven-dependency-plugin (goals "copy-dependencies", "unpack") is not supported by m2e. :-(

[Dan Halbert]

If you want this to happen all the time, remove the <profiles>...<profile> wrappers and make the <build> tag be just under <project>

[Stevan Trajkoski]

@Georgy this does not coy the jars in lib/ , but includes the classes in the compiled project

[Alfonso Nishikawa]

This is fine, but it is copying test dependencies too. I add to myself the excludeScope option (maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-dependency-plugin/…).

[Thomas]

main class not found in (3)

[Julien BRENELIERE]

Work well but it is not required to place the build tag inside the profile tags.

[Duncan Jones]

Your code example doesn't solve the problem, it just bundles everything into a single JAR. Yes, the assembly plugin can be used to achieve this goal, but not like this.

[Duncan Jones]

Although, on further reading, maybe you are responding to this comment.

[RubyTuesdayDONO]

it's been so long that i don't really remember … plus i've gotten rather rusty since focusing on Linux administration at my last firm — but thank you for the feedback!

[Brad Parks]

thanks! this is the easiest way to just copy the libs that would be required by a project into a folder somewhere so you can copy them somewhere else if need be, e.g. a non maven based project. Note that of course you can just pass in a hardcoded folder to use if you like, e.g. mvn dependency:copy-dependencies -DoutputDirectory=./lib

[Gobliins]

Can you do it out of pom.xml?

[Jesse Chisholm]

Note: <excludeScope>test</excludeScope> goes inside the configuration node.

[Searene]

@Thomas I think it's maven clean install, then you will find lib in target

[Alan Donizete]

what would I have to do to copy only 1 dependency?

[Martin Pabst]

<classpathPrefix>lib/</classpathPrefix> helped me a lot. Thank you!

[Divyang Shah]

@Gobliins use ${project.build.directory}/lib instead of ${targetdirectory}

[Admin]

Wanted to upvote, but found out I had done so 2 years ago :)

[Searene]

Maybe it would be more appropriate if the phase were package instead of install

[Vyacheslav Cotruta]

Would replace the install phase with process-resources so that the dependencies are copied before the build goal runs

[jla]

Thank you for this simple option. I used the package target instead but otherwise did what I was looking for.

[BraveBoy]

@JesseChisholm thanks your solution worked

[niken]

dont know how this is not hte accepted answer? anyway , if you want to send dependencies to specific dir, for example called 'lib' , can use mvn dependency:copy-dependencies -DoutputDirectory=lib/