Maven dependency updates for the team

While refactoring a legacy build at work recently, I ran into an issue with the maven xdoclet plugin. It appeared to be confusing the modules I was trying to use when I would use it more than once. It would work fine and then crash and burn throwing an ambiguous subtask error. Oh well.

Anyways, I fixed the problem by downloading the version 1.2.3 src code, applying a patch, and then rebuilding the xdoclet dependencies. I then applied those changed jars to my local repo cache located in the %user_home_dir%/.m2 directory and test it.

Here’s the reason why I wrote this post. To quickly test your change you can simply apply those fixed jars as described above. If the changes appear to work you can then apply them to the company repository, like Nexus or something. Notify others to clear the dependency cache (it can just be for that specific dependency). This will allow the updated version to be pulled down from the company repository. This is the important part.

Another approach is to create a new version number to force download but you are then updating pom files and trying to override what the plugin uses by default. Whichever approach suites your taste.

I’m sure there’s other ways… If you have any please feel free to share a comment!