Sometimes when the required libraries / dependencies is not available in the Maven Central Repository we need to manually install it to our local repository. This library must be placed in the correct directory in our local repository to enable Maven to find it. The default location is under the ${user.home}/.m2/repository.

To make this job easier Maven provide a maven-install-plugin that will help us to install the third-party library in the correct place. The following command shows how to do it.

The long command

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

Where:

• -Dfile = path to the third-party library file
• -DgroupId = the groupId of the library
• -DartifactId = the artifactId of the library
• -Dversion = the version number of the library
• -Dpackaging = the library packaging

An example to install an Oracle JDBC library to your local repository is:

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=ojdbc7.jar -DgroupId=com.oracle \
        -DartifactId=ojdbc7 -Dversion=12.1.0.2 -Dpackaging=jar

The simple command

If you have the pom.xml file, you can install it with the following command:

mvn install:install-file \
        -Dfile=<path-to-file> \
        -DpomFile=<path-to-pomfile>

Where:

• -Dfile = path to the third-party library file
• -DpomFile = the location to the library pom.xml file

Starting with the Maven version 2.5 you can use even a simpler command. When the library is build by Maven, a pom.xml file will be placed under the META-INF directory. This pom.xml file will be used by default when we install the library. To install a library all you need is the following command:

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=<path-to-file>