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  • Jul 16, 2019
  • Post Nº 109

Specifying Maven Local Repository From CLI

Use option "maven.repo.local" to specify the Maven local repository path.

Overview

By default, Maven uses ~/.m2/repository as the default local repository. In some cases, you might want to specify the path from Maven property maven.repo.local as an alternative location.

$ mvn -Dmaven.repo.local=/path/to/repo clean install

This option is specified via command line. In other words, no modification to settings.xml is necessary. Note: the local repository must be an absolute path, according to the guide of Configuring Maven.

Demonstration

Here’s a demo using my personal project mincong-h/java-examples as a example:

java-examples $ pwd
/Users/mincong/github/java-examples

java-examples $ mkdir /tmp/mvn-repo

java-examples $ mvn clean install \
  -Dmaven.repo.local=/tmp/mvn-repo \
  -DskipTests
...

After the Maven build, all artifacts are stored in the new local repository.

java-examples $ tree /tmp/mvn-repo -L 2
/tmp/mvn-repo/
├── antlr
│   └── antlr
├── avalon-framework
│   └── avalon-framework
├── backport-util-concurrent
│   └── backport-util-concurrent
├── bouncycastle
│   └── bcprov-jdk15
├── cglib
│   └── cglib-nodep
├── classworlds
│   └── classworlds
├── com
│   ├── fasterxml
│   ├── google
│   ├── googlecode
│   ├── h2database
│   ├── jcraft
│   ├── sun
│   └── thoughtworks
├── commons-beanutils
│   └── commons-beanutils
├── commons-chain
│   └── commons-chain
...
├── commons-vfs
│   └── commons-vfs
├── dom4j
│   └── dom4j
├── io
│   ├── mincongh
│   └── vavr
├── javax
...
├── xmlunit
│   └── xmlunit
└── xpp3
    └── xpp3_min

126 directories, 0 files

Why Using Alternative Local Repository?

In my own case, it’s for source code escrow. Source code escrow is the deposit of the source code of software with a third-party escrow agent. Escrow is typically requested by a party licensing software (the licensee), to ensure maintenance of the software instead of abandonment or orphaning. The software’s source code is released to the licensee if the licensor files for bankruptcy or otherwise fails to maintain and update the software as promised in the software license agreement.

In this case, we need to have the source code and all dependencies provided to the third-party escrow agent. Using a separated local Maven repository allows to provide all dependencies of the project, while keeping all existing ones unchanged in ~/.m2.

References

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