Make Maven to copy dependencies into target/lib

This works for me:

<project>
  ...
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <id>qa</id>
      <build>
        <plugins>
          <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
            <executions>
              <execution>
                <phase>install</phase>
                <goals>
                  <goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
                </goals>
                <configuration>
                  <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/lib</outputDirectory>
                </configuration>
              </execution>
            </executions>
          </plugin>
        </plugins>
      </build>
    </profile>
  </profiles>
</project>

The best approach depends on what you want to do:

• If you want to bundle your dependencies into a WAR or EAR file, then simply set the packaging type of your project to EAR or WAR. Maven will bundle the dependencies into the right location.
• If you want to create a JAR file that includes your code along with all your dependencies, then use the assembly plugin with the jar-with-dependencies descriptor. Maven will generate a complete JAR file with all your classes plus the classes from any dependencies.
• If you want to simply pull your dependencies into the target directory interactively, then use the dependency plugin to copy your files in.
• If you want to pull in the dependencies for some other type of processing, then you will probably need to generate your own plugin. There are APIs to get the list of dependencies, and their location on disk. You will have to take it from there...

Take a look at the Maven dependency plugin, specifically, the dependency:copy-dependencies goal. Take a look at the example under the heading The dependency:copy-dependencies mojo. Set the outputDirectory configuration property to ${basedir}/target/lib (I believe, you'll have to test).

Hope this helps.

If you make your project a war or ear type maven will copy the dependencies.

You can use the the Shade Plugin to create an uber jar in which you can bundle all your 3rd party dependencies.

You could place a settings.xml file in your project directory with a basic config like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
          xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">
    <localRepository>.m2/repository</localRepository>
    <interactiveMode/>
    <offline/>
    <pluginGroups/>
    <servers/>
    <mirrors/>
    <proxies/>
    <profiles/>
    <activeProfiles/>
</settings>

More information on these settings can be found in the official Maven docs.
Note that the path is resolved relative to the directory where the actual settings file resides in unless you enter an absolute path.

When you execute maven commands you can use the settings file as follows:

mvn -s settings.xml clean install

Side note: I use this in my GitLab CI/CD pipeline in order to being able to cache the maven repository for several jobs so that the dependencies don't need to be downloaded for every job execution. GitLab can only cache files or directories from your project directory and therefore I reference a directory wihtin my project directory.