Basic Maven Project Build Fix Tip

Sometimes, in Eclipse, a maven project will not be properly set up. For instance, when you create a maven project by creating a pom.xml file inside a folder. This can be seen by inspecting the '.classpath' file -- it will contain only these three items (or similar):

<classpathentry kind="con" path="org.eclipse.jdt.launching.JRE_CONTAINER/org.eclipse.jdt.internal.debug.ui.launcher.StandardVMType/J2SE-1.5"/> 

<classpathentry kind="con" path="org.maven.ide.eclipse.MAVEN2_CLASSPATH_CONTAINER"/> 

<classpathentry kind="output" path="target/classes"/>

Then, what you do is this: simply "Disable Dependency Management" and then "Enable Dependency Management" from the "Maven" menu in the contextual menu from the project. If you keep the ".classpath" file open, you'll be able to see the what happens.

In the 'Disable' step, the Maven entry disappears:

<classpathentry kind="con" path="org.maven.ide.eclipse.MAVEN2_CLASSPATH_CONTAINER"/>

Then, in the 'Enable' step, the entries which enable the build appears:

kind="src" output="target/classes" path="src/main/java"> 

<classpathentry kind="src" output="target/test-classes" path="src/test/java">

 along with the 'MAVEN2_CLASSPATH_CONTAINER' thing mentioned above. Done!

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Today I discovered that the above maneuver is in fact useful to handle another problem involving mis-synchronization between ".classpath" and the "pom.xml" file. Article forthcoming.