221
votes

I have a small question about IntelliJ IDEA 11. I just imported a project from subversion - its a maven project. But I have a problem in maven library dependencies so that I can't include all maven dependencies automatically - IDEA shows dependency errors only when I open that class/ Thats what I get here:

enter image description here

So I want all dependencies to be added automatically - is that possible or do I have to go through all class files to identify and add maven dependencies?!

UPDATE: After doing some modifications I found how to resolve my problem in some way. Thats what I did: enter image description here

but I think logically it will not include and check new dependencies ahead?!... Is there any settings area for this in intelliJ - auto export dependencies to classpath ?!

30
It downloads all dependencies but it doesn't seem to add all of them to classpath...Zaur Guliyev
and another problem is that intelliJ shows me red underlined errors only when I open that java file...Zaur Guliyev
One instance where you get this red line is if you have a SNAPSHOT dependency with a classifier, where a newer version of the dependency without the classifier exists. This is perfectly legal in Maven, but IntelliJ gets confused trying to work out the path to the physical file in your local Maven repository.RCross
FYI this can still happen in 15.0.2. Just happened to me. Had to blow away my .iml file and .idea folder and reimport. Incredibly frustrating b/c I spent 2 hours fighting it, and ultimately lost all my carefully crafted run configs.Kevin Pauli
@KevinPauli no need to remove IDEA project files for that, you could just "Reimport All Maven Projects" under "Maven Projects" tab for manual re-import.Zaur Guliyev

30 Answers

304
votes

IntelliJ should download and add all your dependencies to the project's classpath automatically as long as your POM is compliant and all the dependencies are available.

When importing Maven projects into IntelliJ an information box usually comes up asking you if you want to configure Auto-Import for Maven projects. That means that if you make any changes to your POM those changes will be loaded automatically.

You can enable such feature going to File > Settings > Maven > Importing, there is a checkbox that says "Import Maven projects automatically".

If that doesn't help, then I would suggest to make a full clean-up and start again:

  • Close your project window (and IntelliJ) and remove all *.iml files and all .idea folders (there should be one per module)
  • Run mvn clean install from the command line
  • Re-import the project into IntelliJ and pay attention when it asks you to enable auto-import

IntelliJ 2016 Update:

The Import Maven Projects automatically setting has been moved to Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven > Importing in your IntelliJ preferences.

70
votes

Fix before IntelliJ 14

File [menu] -> Settings -> maven -> importing and uncheck "use maven3 to import project"

ref: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-98425 (which may have a few other ideas too)

Fix IntelliJ 15+

Ran into this again, with IntelliJ 15 this time, which has no "use maven3 to import" option available anymore. The cause was that sometimes IntelliJ "doesn't parse maven dependencies right" and if it can't parse one of them right, it gives up on all of them, apparently. You can tell if this is the case by opening the maven projects tool window (View menu -> Tool Windows -> Maven Projects). Then expand one of your maven projects and its dependencies. If the dependencies are all underlined in red, "Houston, we have a problem". enter image description here

You can actually see the real failure by mousing over the project name itself.

enter image description here

In my instance it said "Problems: No versions available for XXX" or "Failed to read descriptor for artifact org.xy.z" ref: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-128846 and https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-152555

It seems in this case I was dealing with a jar that didn't have an associated pom file (in our maven nexus repo, and also my local repository). If this is also your problem, "urrent work around: if you do not actually need to use classes from that jar in your own code (for instance a transitive maven dependency only), you can actually get away with commenting it out from the pom (temporarily), maven project reload, and then uncomment it. Somehow after that point IntelliJ "remembers" its old working dependencies. Adding a maven transitive exclude temporarily might also do it, if you're running into it from transitive chain of dependencies."

Another thing that might help is to use a "newer version" of maven than the bundled 3.0.5. In order to set it up to use this as the default, close all your intellij windows, then open preferences -> build, execution and deployment -> build tools -> maven, and change the maven home directory, it should say "For default project" at the top when you adjust this, though you can adjust it for a particular project as well, as long as you "re import" after adjusting it.

Clear Caches

Deleting your intellij cache folders (windows: HOMEPATH/.{IntellijIdea,IdeaC}XXX linux ~/.IdeaIC15) and/or uninstalling and reinstalling IntelliJ itself. This can also be done by going to File [menu] -> Invalidate Caches / Restart.... Click invalidate and restart. This will reindex your whole project and solve many hard-to-trace issues with IntelliJ.

41
votes

When importing the project, select pom.xml instead of the project directory. It should work.

30
votes

Try to Re-Import the project from the Maven Projects panel in IntelliJ IDEA. It should download and configure all the dependencies defined in your pom.xml automatically.

If download doesn't work from IDEA for some reason, try mvn install from the command line and see if the dependencies can be fetched.

Of course all the required dependencies and any custom repositories must be defined directly in the pom.xml file.

19
votes

For IntelliJ 2016-2.4 (and I believe other new-ish versions):

View > Tool Windows > Maven Projects

In the newly revealed toolbar, select Maven settings (icon of a toolset).

When this screen opens, expand the Maven menu and click 'Importing'

Here, click "Import Maven projects automatically." Also ensure that the 'JDK for Importer' option matches the JDK version you mean to use.

Click OK. Now go to the red dependency in your pom.xml, select the red lightbulb, and click 'Update Maven indices'.

11
votes

What helped me:

Navigage: Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Maven

Specify "Maven home directory" - the place you installed the maven

8
votes

If certain maven modules are not compiling check if their pom.xml is on the "ignored files" list. In IntelliJ goto

preferences -> project settings -> maven -> ignored files

and check if the related pom.xml is ignored.

8
votes

I had the same issue and tried all the answers mentioned here, none worked.

The simple solution is go to your project folder and delete all the .idea and .iml files and restart the IntelliJ ide. It works. No need to do anything with the settings.

7
votes

Open IntelliJ Idea, Go to File > Other Settings > Default Settings... > Maven (Preferences) > Importing or| Preferences > Maven > Importing

enter image description here

Click on Enable Auto-import in the console.

enter image description here

5
votes

When you create a new project you simply need to choose the option:

...
Import project from external model
Create IDEA project structure over existing external model (Eclipse, Maven...)
...

You'll find it pretty straight forward from there.
And in your case you can close your project and simply create a new one. Choose your project's directory, which will override it, making it a Maven project.

5
votes

Importing Maven dependencies may not work if you import the same path several times. This may happen automatically after importing an existing maven project. I can't figure out why this happens, so I'm inclined to think it is a bug.

For example, if my project is

hibernate
  src/main
  src/test

the three paths may be imported as top nodes:

hibernate
src/main
src/test

If such is the case, the dependencies appear to be right, but they won't be used until you remove the superfluous paths (in this case, src/main and src/test). Once you do this, refresh and click Build > Rebuild Project. IDEA will pick up the dependencies.

A symptom of this problem is that IDEA warns you of a duplicated path when you manually check a library (second screenshot in the question).

There are several ways to re-read the dependencies in case you need it. If you go to the “Maven Projects” tab, there is a “Reimport All Maven Projects” icon at the top left of the tab. If you suspect IDEA became confused you can click on File > Invalidate Caches.

5
votes

First check path Specified for User Settings file: in Settings -> Build,Execution,Development -> Build Tools -> Maven . The field should have path of the settings.xml of your maven. Also the settings.xml should have correct path of remote repository.

4
votes

Go into your project structure, under project Settings, Modules, select the dependencies table. For each dependency, change the scope from 'Test' to 'Compile'.

4
votes

If in the lower right corner it says "2 processes running..." or similar, you may just need to wait for that to finish, since it may take time to download all the jars.

4
votes

Reimport the project. If you install maven plugin you can use this.

Right click on the project -> Maven -> Reimport

4
votes

I had a similar issue, in my case I am using a custom settings.xml which was not picked from IntelliJ.

Solution:
File > Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Maven: User settings file (chose here my custom settings.xml).

3
votes

I ran into the problem that some subdependencies couldn't be resolved in IntelliJ 2016.3.X. This could be fixed by changing the Maven home directory in Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven from Bundled (Maven 3) to /usr/share/maven.

After that all subdependencies got resolved as in previous IntelliJ versions.

2
votes

Maven - Reimport did not work for me. I have Spring project in STS(Eclipse) and my solution is to import project to IDEA like so:

1) File - New - Project from Existing Sources... - select directory - choose Eclipse.
2) Set Maven autoimport to true in settings.
3) Then right click in pom.xml and choose Add as Maven Project.

After this it has imported everything.

2
votes

I had the similar issue with my macbook, just did a small change in pom.xml and it started downloading all dependencies:

Earlier dependencies were written as below for my windows machine:

<dependencies>
 <dependency>
  <groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
  <artifactId>mail</artifactId>
  <version>1.4</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

I just removed the <dependencies> and </dependencies> tags and it started downloading all the dependencies:

<dependency>
  <groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
  <artifactId>mail</artifactId>
  <version>1.4</version>
</dependency>

I am not sure it will work for you or not.. but worked fine for me.

Thanks

2
votes

Deleting the .idea folder from the project directory, and then re-importing the project as a Maven project is what worked for me.

2
votes

In my case, path for JAVA used by MAVEN was not set as JAVA_HOME as configured on the machine. Hence, it was not even trying to download the dependencies. Steps I followed which solved this issue,

  1. Checked for JAVA path , Settings >> Build >> Build Tools >> Importing >> JDK for importer. Pointed it to JAVA_HOME.

  2. mvn clean install -U

    Used above command to force the dependencies download.

  3. Re imported Maven Projects

2
votes

So I was also facing this problem in lots of my organisation's codebase. On addition to the answers suggested above, we can tweak around with the allocation pool memory of the jvm. This is because, the volume of the dependencies brought in large codebases may be overwhelming for the jvm for IDE to build the project completely. Hence tried increasing XMX value and it worked! Added -Xmx3072 to resolve the issue of "not building" my Java project in IntelliJ

enter image description here

1
votes

I solved this issue by updating my settings.xml file with correct mirror config, seems that intellij will try to download meta-data from repository every time the maven module imported.

1
votes

Hijacking a bit to add what ended up working for me:

Go into the Maven Projects sidebar on the right edge of the IDE, and verify that your dependencies are listed correctly under your module there. Assuming they are, just ask IDEA to reimport then (the first button at the top, looks like two blue arrows forming a counter-clockwise circle).

Once I did that, and let IDEA reload the project for me, all my dependencies were magically understood.

For reference: this was with IDEA 13.1.2

1
votes

I faced the same problem and tried everything suggested which did not solve the issue, I was using Intellij version 13.1.3

Finally after spending more than couple of hours trying to fix it, I decided to try an upgraded version and opened the project in version 14.1.4 which ultimately resolved the issue. I would think this as a probable bug in the previous version.

I hope this helps!

1
votes

I was able to resolve it by removing unnecessary modules from Project Settings -> Modules list.

enter image description here

It turns out these additional modules were created automatically by IntelliJ IDEA when I created the IntelliJ project by importing from the project folder (instead of by opening pom.xml). Then, after declaring the project as Maven project, proper modules were created, and existing modules were conflicting with them. It is also possible to exclude those modules during project creation.

1
votes

In my case, one of the modules was ignored for some reason. To resolve that: Right click the problematic module and choose "Unignore Projects".

unignore project example

0
votes

If everything else fails, check if the jar file in your local .m2 repository is indeed valid and not corrupted. In my case, the file had not been fully downloaded.

0
votes

In maven the dependencies got included for me when I removed the dependencyManagement xml section and just had dependencies directly under project section

0
votes

The problem appears to be that despite listing your dependencies in the pom.xml, IntelliJ IDEA does not rebuild those dependencies when you run your project.

What worked for me is this:

Go to 'Run' -> 'Edit Configurations...', find your application, make sure the "Before launch:" section is expanded, click the green plus sign, and select "Build Project".

enter image description here