How to use pom.xml/Maven to initialize a local thoughtsite (App Engine sample) project in Eclipse?

Question

This sample app ("thoughtsite") for App Engine contains a pom.xml in its trunk:

http://code.google.com/p/thoughtsite/source/browse/#svn/trunk

But I don't know what command to run in Maven to set up the project locally. (The README doesn't mention anything about Maven.)

I tried to just import the project code directly into Eclipse but it doesn't look like it's in an appropriate format for a direct import. So I assume I need to do something with Maven to get it set up correctly. I haven't really used Maven before so I'm not sure what command I would need to run to set everything up. The pom.xml seems like it downloads a bunch of dependencies for the project like the Spring jar files which I don't see anywhere else in the svn repository.

Answer 1

First you need to install maven. (Download it, put it somewhere and set the environment variables JAVA_HOME and MAVEN_HOME ). Here are some more Installation instructions .

Then either a) install m2eclipse and then import the project using "import existing maven project" you should be up and running.

or, b) on the command line, run mvn eclipse:eclipse from inside the project directory and then just import the project as an existing eclipse project

I prefer m2eclipse because it makes eclipse maven-savvy, but many others prefer to just tell eclipse where stuff is from the outside using the command line