Support for unversioned third party JARs
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Key: MNG-2572
URL: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-2572
Project: Maven 2
Issue Type: New Feature
Components: Dependencies
Affects Versions: 2.0.4
Reporter: Markus KARG
Problem:
Maven's dependency management is great, but it lacks "real" support for
unversioned, third party JARs.
A Maven project declared dependencies on "foreign" JARs by adding a dependency
to the own pom.xml. That dependency declaration comprises of groupId,
atifactId, and version. In turn, Maven builds the actually used JAR name by
concatenating the version to the JAR's actual name. This is great if the
referenced JAR is built with Maven, but it is a problem whenever that other JAR
is not built by Maven.
Example:
You project needs to load some classes of FOO.jar. FOO.jar itself is a closed
source library that can be downloaded on the web, but it must not be
repackaged. Your own project will never succeed using it, since FOO.jar is
never called FOO-1.0.0.jar but always only FOO-1.0.0.jar. Since e. g.
licenceing rules restricts renaming and repackaging of FOO.jar, you cannot use
that JAR in your project and in turn, you even cannot use Maven to build your
own project.
Cause:
This is caused by Maven expecting the name of a referenced binary always
containing the version.
Solution:
Maven should allow pom.xml to specificy the actual JAR name, e. g. by adding a
new tag named <jar-name> that is parallel to <version>, <artifactId> etc. Once
that tag is provided, it doesn't build the JAR name by adding the version but
it just uses the provided JAR name. This implies the following two results:
(a) When <jar-name>FOO</jar-name> is provided in the section describing the own
project, then "mvn package" will create FOO.jar instead of
ArtifactId-VersionId.jar.
(b) When <jar-name>FOO</jar-name> is provided within a <dependency> section,
then "mvn package" will add FOO.jar to Class-Path: instead of
ArtifactId-VersionId.jar, and the dependency loader will try to download
FOO.jar instead of ArtifactId-VersionId.jar.
Notes:
This new feature is optional. It is not intended to replace the dependency
mechanism as it currently exists, but it is only an additional option that can
be used whenever it is necessary to have the JAR name explicitely told.
The repository will still be organized and scanned using the information found
in groupId, artifactId and version. This mechanism is not touched. Only the
JAR's actual name is touched by this change.
Side Effects:
There should be no side effects besides solving the told problems, since the
original mechanism is not changed. The new feature is completely optional.
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