Apache Maven Install Plugin – Generating a generic POM

Generating a generic POM

There are times when you do not have a POM for a 3rd party artifact. For instance, when installing a proprietary or commercial JAR into a repository. The Install Plugin can create a generic POM in this case which contains the minimal set of POM elements required by Maven, such as groupId, artifactId, version, packaging. You tell Maven to generate a POM by setting the generatePom parameter to true.

mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-install-plugin:3.0.0:install-file  -Dfile=path-to-your-artifact-jar \
                                                                              -DgroupId=your.groupId \
                                                                              -DartifactId=your-artifactId \
                                                                              -Dversion=version \
                                                                              -Dpackaging=jar \
                                                                              -DgeneratePom=true

Note: By using the fully qualified path of a goal, you're ensured to be using the preferred version of the maven-install-plugin. When using mvn install:install-file its version depends on its specification in the pom or the version of Apache Maven.