java - Using Maven to download dependencies to a directory on the command line

Question

I need to download all transitive dependencies of a project to a directory on the command line without having a pom.xml file or other script. Ideally I would be able to do this with one or two commands. From what I can tell, this is at least a 2 step process with mvn.

1. Download dependencies to the local repository
2. Copy the dependencies to the lib directory

To get the dependencies I run

$ mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin:2.6:get -DgroupId=org.jclouds.provider -DartifactId=rackspace-cloudservers-us -Dversion=1.5.8

Which works great. Unfortunately the dest param doesn't help me as it won't put all transitive dependencies in the dest.

So now I need to copy that JAR file and all of its transitive dependencies into my lib directory. I know this part has been asked many time on StackOverflow but nothing has worked for my yet. I've tried the following.

$ mvn dependency:copy-dependencies ...
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin:2.1:copy-dependencies (default-cli): Goal requires a project to execute but there is no POM in this directory

and

$ mvn dependency:copy ...
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin:2.1:copy (default-cli): Goal requires a project to execute but there is no POM in this directory

From reading the documentation and other answers here on StackOverflow for copy-dependencies and copy I thought I would be able to use them from the command line without a pom.xml but mvn seems to need one. My Maven version is Apache Maven 3.0.4 (r1232337; 2012-01-17 02:44:56-0600).

Can anyone give me an example of copying transitive dependencies using mvn without a pom.xml?

Is there a better way to do what I'm trying accomplish here?

Answer 1

Apache ivy can be run as a standalone jar to download Maven dependencies. No POM required.

curl -L -O http://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=org/apache/ivy/ivy/2.3.0/ivy-2.3.0.jar
java -jar ivy-2.3.0.jar -dependency org.jclouds.provider rackspace-cloudservers-us 1.5.8 -retrieve "lib/[artifact]-[revision](-[classifier]).[ext]"

Produces the following files:

├── ivy-2.3.0.jar
└── lib
    ├── aopalliance-1.0.jar
    ├── asm-3.1.jar
    ├── bcprov-jdk16-1.46.jar
    ├── cglib-2.2.1-v20090111.jar
    ├── clojure-1.3.0.jar
    ├── core.incubator-0.1.0.jar
    ├── gson-2.2.jar
    ├── guava-13.0.jar
    ├── guice-3.0.jar
    ├── guice-assistedinject-3.0.jar
    ├── javax.inject-1.jar
    ├── jclouds-compute-1.5.8.jar
    ├── jclouds-core-1.5.8.jar
    ├── jclouds-scriptbuilder-1.5.8.jar
    ├── jsr250-api-1.0.jar
    ├── jsr311-api-1.1.1.jar
    ├── openstack-keystone-1.5.8.jar
    ├── openstack-nova-1.5.8.jar
    ├── rackspace-cloudidentity-1.5.8.jar
    ├── rackspace-cloudservers-us-1.5.8.jar
    ├── rackspace-cloudservers-us-1.5.8-javadoc.jar
    ├── rackspace-cloudservers-us-1.5.8-sources.jar
    ├── rocoto-6.1.jar
    └── tools.logging-0.2.3.jar