If I did not miss-understand the maven dependencies' mechanism in project.xml :
With <dependencies> <dependency> <id>DEPEND</id> <version>1.0</version> <url>http://address/plugin/</url> </dependency> </dependencies> Maven will first try to download "http://address/plugin/DEPEND/jars/DEPEND -1.0.jar" under $MAVEN_HOME_LOCAL/repository/DEPEND/jars/DEPEND-1.0.jar It should be understand as an unspecified/default <type>repository</type> attribute. And with <dependencies> <dependency> <id>PLUGIN</id> <version>1.0</version> <url>http://address/plugin/</url> <type>plugin</type> </dependency> </dependencies> Maven will first try to download "http://address/plugin/PLUGIN/jars/PLUGIN -1.0.jar" under $MAVEN_HOME_LOCAL/repository/PLUGIN/jars/PLUGIN-1.0.jar and expand the jar file under $MAVEN_HOME_LOCAL/plugins/PLUGIN-1.0 (the mechanism is quite different with tags <groupId> and <artifactId>) In my project, Maven is used as a build framework: ... during the development step (step #1) : - automate the build process of interdependent tools - build the end-user framework (viewed as a maven-project template + tools) - make an intermediate distribution with this end-user framework + external data ... to modelize, configure and build a final product based on the previous end-user framework - ordering the build process steps (step #2) - * download/ask for intermediate dependencies (bin, data, bin + data) as needed. Binaries should be not only jars. - make a distribution with a full-functionnal system (understand: pre-configured and coherent set of applications ready to be installed on pre-defined - i.e modelized - hosts). In this purpose, the maven dependencies' mechanism should be an elegant way to define a generic download mechanism on demand and to provide a very light weight intermediate distribution (in step #1) for my "multi-purpose project". So my questions are... 1. To be a quite more generic (not only java/binary oriented), is there a way to define other formats available for automatic download with the <type> attribute. I mean Is there a way to define dependency as a DEPEND-1.0.tar or, mostly appreciated, as a PLUGIN-1.0.[tar|bz2|tgz|...]. I tried <type>something</type> which works (download in $MAVEN_HOME_LOCAL/repository/something/jars/DEPEND-1.0.jar) but I lost the "precious" automatic expand functionnality of the <type>plugin</type>... 2. Should the dependencies be specific of a particular goal in maven.xml. With these pre-requisites, it should become coarse to distribute specific data and made its available (question 1.) on demand (question 2.) All suggestions are welcome... Olivier Champagne @ EADS DCS S.A (\(\ "Regular Expression ( ~.) are to strings what o((")(") math is to numbers" --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]