Setting up maven to use local JAR Libraries

Since the very first time I've started using maven (and as a previous ANT user) I wondered how I could achieve the only thing that ANT does great: Add manually my own libraries.

The answer is easy: install them into the local repository. But that's not so easy! If someone new joined the project, he would have to install the artifact also in his local repository and this is an extra step anyone could easily forget!

Another thing you could do is install nexus in some tomcat, and after a little bit of configuration install the jar and add the server url as a repository on my project, but... Isn't that a little bit of overkill for one or two JARS?

All the previous analysis already contains the solution: we need to do both: Add a repository, but the repository should be local... to the project and manually install the files there (and probably check them in into a repository).

And here is how you do It: First of all you need to know that you can add a file:// url as the url of the repository, so we can add something like this:

   <repositories> 
    <repository> 
      <id>project</id> 
      <name>Project Maven Repository</name> 
      <layout>default</layout> 
      <url>file://${project.basedir}/lib/</url> 
    </repository> 
  </repositories> 

And we take advantage of the variable referencing the project's directory: project.basedir.

So now we only need to copy artifacts installed manually from our local repository to our project repository (or better install them directly into the project repository). And that's it your project build will still be flawless and you won't have to worry about putting nexus to work or remind your new co-workers to install the artifact.