Maven WAR dependency - cannot resolve package?

Question

I have a war dependency:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>my.package</groupId>
        <artifactId>myservices</artifactId>
        <version>0.3</version>
        <type>war</type>
    </dependency>

Now, this exists in my local repository, and the class exists at WEB-INF/classes/my/package/myservices. When I go to use myservices, however, I get package my.package does not exist. Intelli-J knows to change myservices into my.package.myservices, but trying to import seems to not work at all.

Is there something special I need to do with this war dependency?

Answer 1

It just doesn't work that way. war files are not supposed to be put on the classpath, but deployed to application servers (or servlet containers) that can deal with their special structure.

Of course you can probably find a custom classloader somewhere that can deal with java war files, but it's just not the way to do it.

Keep your code in a jar, include the jar in your war and in this application. But don't use a war as a dependency, unless you are building an EAR file.