pom2classpath

Currently this tool just generates <classpathentry> elements for all of the dependencies in one or more pom.xml files. You are left to merge those into your existing .classpath file by hand.

Eventually, I'll add support for generating additional elements used by .classpath based on the configuration in pom.xml as well as add support for updating existing .classpath files in place.

The tool assumes you use M2_REPO as the Eclipse path variable indicating the location of your local Maven installation. This seems to be moderately common practice in the wild, but perhaps I'll eventually add an option for configuring that as well.

Finally, I have yet to wire up the necessary build machinations to generate a single executable jar file, so running the tool is not at all convenient as well. So much to do!

Example input and output

Given dependencies like so:

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>commons-digester</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-digester</artifactId>
    <version>1.8</version>
    <scope>compile</scope>
    <optional>true</optional>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.ant</groupId>
    <artifactId>ant</artifactId>
    <version>1.7.1</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>junit</groupId>
    <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
    <version>4.8.1</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

You get output like so:

<classpathentry sourcepath="M2_REPO/commons-digester/commons-digester/1.8/commons-digester-1.8-sources.jar" kind="var" path="M2_REPO/commons-digester/commons-digester/1.8/commons-digester-1.8.jar"></classpathentry>
<classpathentry sourcepath="M2_REPO/org/apache/ant/ant/1.7.1/ant-1.7.1-sources.jar" kind="var" path="M2_REPO/org/apache/ant/ant/1.7.1/ant-1.7.1.jar"></classpathentry>
<classpathentry sourcepath="M2_REPO/junit/junit/4.8.1/junit-4.8.1-sources.jar" kind="var" path="M2_REPO/junit/junit/4.8.1/junit-4.8.1.jar"></classpathentry>

Eventually I'll support filtering on scope, as well as checking whether source files exist before adding them.

TODO

• Generate kind="src" entries for source directories.
• Generate kind="output" entries for target directories.
• Generate boilerplate kind="con" entries.
• Check for existence of source jar before adding sourcepath attribute.
• Add exported="true" for non-optional dependencies.
• Support in-place update of existing .classpath file, preserving existing elements.
• If we see a dependent project with same name as a dependency (just artifact), omit that dependency.
• Contemplate how we might avoid repeating dependencies exported by dependent (Eclipse) projects.