How to depend on multiple projects in a maven library?

Question

My project depends on an external library, which consists of a number of maven projects.

• Do I have to define each of the projects in the library to be a module in my project's parent pom.xml? Is there a way to define the library as a whole in my project without individually listing all the projects?

My project directly depends on only one project in the library, but that project depends on other projects in the library.

• Do I need to define all the projects in the library in my project's dependencies?

Answer 1

You need a composite pom -- a pom which just declares a bunch of dependencies. You depend on it, and transitively, you get its dependencies.

See this discussion for more information.

Answer 2

Ideally, in parent pom you define modules i.e, external libraries which you want to build. When you build the parent pom, it will build all modules which are defined in parent pom. And further, modules will build other dependencies/modules.