Maven does not find dependencies at compile type

Question

I have a little experimental project managed by Maven. It uses a library for generating PDFs. This is my pom.xml:

<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>br.com.brandizzi.adam.pdfize</groupId>
    <artifactId>pdfize</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.xhtmlrenderer</groupId>
            <artifactId>core-renderer</artifactId>
            <version>R8pre2</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

It has only one class:

package br.com.brandizzi.adam.pdfize;
//

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws DocumentException,
            MalformedURLException, FileNotFoundException {

        String inputUrl = new File(args[0]).toURI().toURL().toString();
        OutputStream pdf = new FileOutputStream(args[1]);

        ITextRenderer renderer = new ITextRenderer();
        renderer.setDocument(inputUrl);
        renderer.layout();
        renderer.createPDF(pdf);

    }
}

When I run mvn compile, however, I get this error:

$ mvn compile
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]                                                                         
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building pdfize 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.5:resources (default-resources) @ pdfize ---
[debug] execute contextualize
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] Copying 0 resource
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.3.2:compile (default-compile) @ pdfize ---
[WARNING] File encoding has not been set, using platform encoding UTF-8, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/target/classes
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] COMPILATION ERROR : 
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[9,28] error: package org.xhtmlrenderer.pdf does not exist
[ERROR] /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[11,23] error: package com.lowagie.text does not exist
[ERROR] /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[38,3] error: cannot find symbol
[ERROR]  class Main
/home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[29,11] error: cannot find symbol
[ERROR]  class Main
/home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[43,2] error: cannot find symbol
[ERROR]  class Main
/home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[43,31] error: cannot find symbol
[INFO] 6 errors 
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 1.094s
[INFO] Finished at: Sat Mar 30 21:36:59 BRT 2013
[INFO] Final Memory: 9M/106M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-compiler-plugin:2.3.2:compile (default-compile) on project pdfize: Compilation failure: Compilation failure:
[ERROR] /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[9,28] error: package org.xhtmlrenderer.pdf does not exist
[ERROR] /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[11,23] error: package com.lowagie.text does not exist
[ERROR] /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[38,3] error: cannot find symbol
[ERROR] class Main
[ERROR] /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[29,11] error: cannot find symbol
[ERROR] class Main
[ERROR] /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[43,2] error: cannot find symbol
[ERROR] class Main
[ERROR] /home/adam/software/workspaces/test/pdfize/src/main/java/br/com/brandizzi/adam/pdfize/Main.java:[43,31] error: cannot find symbol
[ERROR] -> [Help 1]
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/MojoFailureException

What is going wrong?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:49

The problem is that the dependency configuration is set up to the runtime scope when one should use the compile scope. So, the <dependency> element on the pom.xml should be changed to be like this:

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.xhtmlrenderer</groupId>
        <artifactId>core-renderer</artifactId>
        <version>R8pre2</version>
        <scope>compile</scope> <!-- <== NOTE THE DIFFERENCE -->
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Of course, this raises a question about why would I try to use the runtime scope in the first place. I was trying to build a JAR with all dependencies and, if you are trying to do it too, there is no point on changing the scope. Instead, follow this awesome answer.

You can actually just not specify the scope in this case (`compile` is the default). — Daniel, Mar 31 '13 at 01:11

Maven does not find dependencies at compile type

1 Answers1