Problem

Maven doesn’t seem to connect to the Internet. I have the http_proxy environment variables set. I also configured Eclipse Preferences|General|Network Connections to connect to my proxy. However, when I start up eclipse, I get something like this:

1/19/11 3:25:34 PM CST: Updating index central|http://repo1.maven.org/maven2
1/19/11 3:25:35 PM CST: Unable to update index for central|http://repo1.maven.org/maven2

Solution

The m2 Maven plugin for Eclipse ignores the http_proxy Environment variable and the Network Connection configuration. Instead, it’s necessary to set the proxy using the settings.xml file. Settings.xml is found on your home directory. Here’s an example:

<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0
                      http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">
  <localRepository/>
  <interactiveMode/>
  <usePluginRegistry/>
  <offline/>
  <pluginGroups/>
  <servers/>
  <mirrors/>
  <proxies>
    <proxy>
      <id>myproxy</id>
      <active>true</active>
      <protocol>http</protocol>
      <host>proxy.somewhere.com</host>
      <port>8080</port>
      <username>proxyuser</username>
      <password>somepassword</password>
      <nonProxyHosts>*.google.com|ibiblio.org</nonProxyHosts>
    </proxy>
  </proxies>
  <profiles/>
  <activeProfiles/>
</settings>

There is a hyperlink to this file in Window|Preferences|Maven|User Settings in Eclipse. After making your changes, just click “Update Settings”.

References

• Maven Settings Reference