Configuring proxy settings for Apache Maven

Ever wondered how to build your project with Apache Maven via a proxy server? This is a brief tutorial on how to do so.

Environment : Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric

                        Apache maven 2.2.1

Apache maven holds all the configuration data in a single file called settings.xml file inside the 'conf' directory in the main directory of maven. The file includes configuration details regarding the proxies therefore we need to edit that section in order to enable the proxy server for a maven build.

This is how to do it.

• Download the maven binary distribution from Apache Maven downloads page. The newest version is 3.0.4 however the stable version is 2.2.1 for the existing projects which are not upgraded into maven 3.

• Extract the binary distribution into somewhere in your hard disk. apache-maven-2.2.1 directory will be visible now. Browse to the 'conf' directory inside 'apache-maven-2.2.1' main directory.

• The 'settings.xml' file is inside the 'conf' directory. Open the file with a text editor and uncomment the section between <proxy> </proxy> tags. Edit the <proxy> entry as follows.

<proxies>
    <!-- proxy
     | Specification for one proxy, to be used in connecting to the network.
     | -->
    <proxy>
      <id>optional</id>
      <active>true</active>
      <protocol>http</protocol>
      <username>proxyuser</username>
      <password>proxypass</password>
      <host>MYHOST.LK</host>
      <port>3200</port>
      <nonProxyHosts>www.google.com|*.somewhere.com</nonProxyHosts>
    </proxy>
   
  </proxies>

• Replace the MYHOST.LK address with the host address of your proxy server and replace the port number with relevant proxy port too. Save and close the file, now and you are ready to build via a proxy :)