minimal maven pom.xml to download JARs in to a lib/ directory

pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project
    xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>com.foo</groupId>
  <artifactId>bar</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

  <dependencies>

    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.google.collections</groupId>
      <artifactId>google-collections</artifactId>
      <version>1.0</version>
    </dependency>

  </dependencies>

  <build>
    <directory>lib</directory>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <outputDirectory>
            ${project.build.directory}
          </outputDirectory>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>

</project>

Run with mvn clean dependency:copy-dependencies

Sources:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11587375/how-to-change-maven-build-directory
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7742252/how-to-use-maven-pom-to-download-jar-files-only-to-a-specific-directory
• https://gist.github.com/torgeir/6742158