How to reference javadocs to dependencies in Maven's eclipse plugin when javadoc not attached to dependency

user_4476 0
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I use Eclipse, Maven, and Java in my development. I use Maven to download dependencies (jar files and javadoc when available) and Maven's eclipse plug-in to generate the .project and .classpath files for Eclipse. When the dependency downloaded does not have attached javadoc I manually add a link for the javadoc in the .classpath file so that I can see the javadoc for the dependency in Eclipse. Then when I run Maven's eclipse plugin to regenerate the .classpath file it of course wipes out that change.

Is there a way to configure Maven's eclipse plug-in to automatically add classpath attributes for javadoc when running Maven's eclipse plug-in?

I'm only interested in answers where the javadoc and/or sources are not provided for the dependency in the maven repository, which is the case most often for me. Using downloadSources and/or downloadJavadocs properties won't help this problem.

eclipse maven-2 java
6 Answers

From the Maven Eclipse Plugin FAQ

The following example shows how to do this in the command-line:

mvn eclipse:eclipse -DdownloadSources=true  -DdownloadJavadocs=true

or in your pom.xml:

<project>
  [...]
  <build>
    [...]
    <plugins>
      [...]
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-eclipse-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <downloadSources>true</downloadSources>
          <downloadJavadocs>true</downloadJavadocs>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      [...]
    </plugins>
    [...]
  </build>
  [...]
</project>
user_181870

You might consider just avoiding this problem completely by installing the javadoc jar into your local repository manually using the install-file goal and passing in the -Dclassifier=javadoc option. Once you do that the .classpath that mvn generates should be correct.

If you use a remote repo as a proxy to central you could also deploy the javadocs to that repo and then everyone else who uses that proxy will now get the javadocs automatically as well.

Mike_Deck_12470

Would having the sources for the dependency help? You can tell the eclipse plugin to download those (and refer to them in the .classpath) with -DdownloadSources=true

user_42490
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