Does "build with local dependencies" exist in Maven without multi-module?

Question

I have a set of applications, all use Maven and the local repository. The applications form a dependency tree using <dependency> in their pom.xml. All of these projects have -SNAPSHOT in their version.

Is it possible for Maven (or some compatible dependency manager) to build an application together with all of its local dependencies whose source changed?

I do not want to create a multi-module project, because:

• the projects are exactly libraries, not modules;
• I do not want an additional complexity just to have a form of build which is already precisely defined;
• I want the process to be dynamic: if a library is mature enough to be put into a remote repository, it would be no more rebuilt with the main project and that's ok.

For now, there is a lot of refactoring, moving code from one library to another etc. and it happens often that substantial parts of the dependency tree need to be rebuilt. I thus need to manually write mvn install in several projects in order to assure that there is no stale code.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66067002/does-build-with-local-dependencies-exist-in-maven-without-multi-module

Answer 1

No, it doesn't work. Even with a multi-module project, maven does not detect which modules have changed sources in it and which do not.

There was a (flaky) implementation in Maven 2, but it was not continued in 3.x, see How to get maven 3.0 to only build modules with local scm changes

I hoped they would include it again in maven 4, but I didn't see it yet: https://maarten.mulders.it/2020/11/whats-new-in-maven-4/

I once did a similar setup, but had to use shell scripts with some git magic to get it working.

You can also decide to put your libraries in separate repo's from the start, and use the repo tool that google uses for android development: https://github.com/GerritCodeReview/git-repo/blob/main/README.md