See development setup.

Yes, by:

• Using the fast build profile with -Pfast, that does:
  • Skipping test with -Dmaven.test.skip
• Building offline (doesn't work the first time) with -o
• Building only the module you need
• Only compiling if you need nothing more with mvn compile
• Using a mirror of Ibiblio, which are a lot faster. See Maven's documentation.

For example: /sandbox/mvn -o -Pfast install.

Search http://www.ibiblio.org/maven2, starting with the org and net subdirectories. For example http://www.ibiblio.org/maven2/org/springframework/spring-core/1.2.6/ has groupId org.springframework, artifactId spring-core and version 1.2.6. Note: http://www.mvnrepository.com is an easier to search.

• Always prefer a longer groupIds (org.springframework is better then springframework).
• Always prefer smaller peices (don't take spring-full).

First add it as a dependency in dependencyManagement entity in the root pom.xml. This way the version only is defined on one place, making it easy to upgrade later. However it must stil be added to the dependencies list of each module that requires it.

Then decide which modules will directly (not transitively) use the dependency. Add it in the dependencies entity in the pom.xml of those modules without version.

Do a mvn install eclipse:eclipse idea:idea to download the library and configure it your IDE. If it works, send a mail to the mailing list to notify everyone to do this too.

If the library is not available in Ibiblio, it can be added it to our own remote repository with mvn deploy:deploy-file.

Warning: Some libraries have their pom on Ibiblio but not their artifact (jar, war, ...), such as Sun's older activation jars. Add the jar to our own remote repository but use the pom of Ibiblio as it will have decently configured transitive dependencies.

Yes, it's at http://spring-rich-c.sf.net/maven2repository .