Get Maven artifact version at runtime

java, maven-2

Solution

You should not need to access Maven-specific files to get the version information of any given library/class.

You can simply use `getClass().getPackage().getImplementationVersion()` to get the version information that is stored in a .jar-files `MANIFEST.MF`. Unfortunately Maven does not write the correct information to the manifest as well by default!

Instead one has to modify the `<archive>` configuration element of the `maven-jar-plugin` to set `addDefaultImplementationEntries` and `addDefaultSpecificationEntries` to `true`, like this:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <archive>                   
            <manifest>
                <addDefaultImplementationEntries>true</addDefaultImplementationEntries>
                <addDefaultSpecificationEntries>true</addDefaultSpecificationEntries>
            </manifest>
        </archive>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Ideally this configuration should be put into the company `pom` or another base-pom.

Detailed documentation of the `<archive>` element can be found in the Maven Archive documentation.

Problem

I have noticed that in a Maven artifact's JAR, the project.version attribute is included in two files: ``` META-INF/maven/${groupId}/${artifactId}/pom.properties META-INF/maven/${groupId}/${artifactId}/pom.xml ``` Is there a recommended way to read this version at runtime?

Original source

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