How do I include third party libraries in openLiberty maven build - maven

Question

I'm currently running a PoC with open Liberty and I'm having a bit of trouble with libraries.
The short of it is our project has a few third party jars that need to be included as libraries, but I can't figure out how to include them when I run mvn install in my Open Liberty project.
I'm trying to configure them in server.xml as follows:
<library id="MyLib" name="My Libraries">
<fileset dir="${server.config.dir}/myLib/" includes="*.jar" id="myLib"/>
</library>
I had hoped they would be picked up by the maven build, but obviously not.
What steps do I need to take to make make sure my library jars are placed in the correct place when running mvn install?

Answer 1

First of all, I will recommend the easiest approach which is packaging the libraries inside of your application (no server.xml <library> config needed this way). If you are using the maven-war-plugin, then any non-provided dependencies will automatically end up in WEB-INF/lib/ of your application. However, if you have more than 1 application in your Liberty server that need the same libraries, this may not be a good solution.
On to your original question, you can use the maven-dependency-plugin to copy any maven artifact into a particular location during the build. When using this plugin to set up a <library>, be sure to bind the copy step to the prepare-package phase.
Here is an example of adding JUnit to ${server.config.dir}/myLib/ during a Maven build:
<project>
[...]
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1.1</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>copy</id>
<phase>prepare-package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>copy</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<artifactItems>
<artifactItem>
<groupId>junit</groupId>
<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
<version>3.8.1</version>
<type>jar</type>
<overWrite>false</overWrite>
<outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/liberty/wlp/usr/servers/myServer/myLib</outputDirectory>
<destFileName>junit.jar</destFileName>
</artifactItem>
</artifactItems>
<overWriteReleases>false</overWriteReleases>
<overWriteSnapshots>true</overWriteSnapshots>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
[...]
</project>