How to manually install an artifact in Maven 2?

98
votes

I've encountered some errors when I tried to install an artifact manually with Maven 2. I wanted to install a jar from a local directory with the command

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=jta-1.0.1B.jar

But Maven gave a build error which reads like:

Invalid task '.01B.jar': you must
specify a valid lifecycle phase, or a
goal in the format plugin:goal or
pluginGroupId:pluginArtifactId:pluginVersion:goal

Is there a mistake with my command?

6
maven-2installation
What is the status of this? Is you question resolved? – Matt

6 Answers

154
votes

You need to indicate the groupId, the artifactId and the version for your artifact:

mvn install:install-file \
  -DgroupId=javax.transaction \
  -DartifactId=jta \
  -Dpackaging=jar \
  -Dversion=1.0.1B \
  -Dfile=jta-1.0.1B.jar \
  -DgeneratePom=true
39
votes

According to maven's Guide to installing 3rd party JARs, the command is:

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=<path-to-file> -DgroupId=<group-id> \
-DartifactId=<artifact-id> -Dversion=<version> -Dpackaging=<packaging>

You need indeed the packaging option. This answers the original question.

Now, in your context, you are fighting with a jar provided by Sun. You should read the Coping with Sun JARs page too. There, you'll learn how to help maven to provide you better information about Sun jars location and how to add Java.net Maven 2 repository which contains jta-1.0.1B.jar. Add this in your settings.xml (not portable) or pom.xml (portable):

  <repositories>
    <repository>
      <id>maven2-repository.dev.java.net</id>
      <name>Java.net Repository for Maven</name>
      <url>http://download.java.net/maven/2/</url>
      <layout>default</layout>
    </repository>
  </repositories>
15
votes

I had to add packaging, so:

mvn install:install-file \
  -DgroupId=javax.transaction \
  -DartifactId=jta \
  -Dversion=1.0.1B \
  -Dfile=jta-1.0.1B.jar \
  -DgeneratePom=true \
  -Dpackaging=jar
4
votes

If you ever get similar errors when using Windows PowerShell, you should try Windows' simple command-line. I didn't find out what caused this, but PowerShell seems to interpret some of Maven's parameters.

2
votes

All the posted answers rightfully discuss this from a strictly maven perspective. My issues was in doing this install for maven using Netbeans as my primary IDE. I found the below article helpful.

Credit to the following netbeans forum article: http://forums.netbeans.org/topic22907.html

  1. In Maven project open "Add dependency" dialog
  2. Make up some groupId, artifactId and version and fill them, OK.
  3. Dependency will be added to the pom.xml and will appear under "Libraries" node of maven project
  4. Right-click Lib node and "manually install artifact", fill the path to the jar. Jar should be installed to local Maven repo with coordinates entered in step 2)