I’m writing maven plugin which depends on several java tools. I’m quite happy with it and want to share it with the community. I’m interested in correct way to handle dependency to these tools:
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Use usual dependency way – put to central repository. But I’m not owner of these tools and I’m not going to maintain them. But I could start discussion with author
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As I saw like several other plugins require for user to download these tools and provide path to them through configuration. But they are java tools, as well this is much less convenient for the end users
I’m asking community what would be the best and “right” in maven way to handle this.
I think the first option with standard dependencies would be the say to go. I would suggest that you use released version of the 3rd party tools. As a back up you could a provide an ‘offline’ mode script which would download the 3rd party resources to the users local machine.