[MNG-806] tools.jar needs to be supported as a normal dependency

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 2.0-beta-1
• Environment: sun sdk
• Assignee: John Dennis Casey
• Reporter: Matthew Pocock
• Created: 30/Aug/05 07:43
• Updated: 01/Feb/06 14:44
• Resolved: 12/Sep/05 21:45

Description

Sun SDKs have a tools.jar that provides API for extending the Sun java tools. This includes APT and Javadoc. There is no mechanism in maven for loading in tools.jar as a dependency. It can be added to the classpath before maven is launched, or manually loaded into the local repository. However, neither of these solutions are very satisfactory.

Could we have some smarts in the dependency loading that understands a magical jdk groupId that resolves to the current JDK being used for compilation? This would let JDK-dependent stuff be linked in. In the case of tools.jar, the dependency snippet would look something like this:

<dependency>
<groupId>sun.jdk</groupId>
<artifactId>tools</artifactId>
<type>jar</type>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>