How to Download Sun Jars in Maven Projects

Sun jars cannot be hosted in Maven central repository due to Sun's Binary License, e.g:

• javax.sql:jdbc-stdex
• javax.transaction:jta
• javax.activation:activation

java.net provides a Maven repository to access Sun jars. It is a good practice to add following repository in your settings.xml file:

<repository>
      <id>maven2-repository.dev.java.net</id>
      <name>Java.net Repository for Maven</name>
      <url>http://download.java.net/maven/2/</url>
      <layout>default</layout>
</repository>

More details can be found at:
http://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-coping-with-sun-jars.html

A Nice Maven Feature In Intellij 8

There is a useful maven feature in Intellij 8. As you know, maven doesn't download the sources.jar files of the libraries into the local repository, by default. You can download the sources.jar files of the dependencies of the project by just one click of a button. First open the Maven view in Intellij. Then press the "Download artifacts" button from the toolbar:

Actually this feature also exists in Intellij IDEA v7 but I can't make it work. Probably, there is a bug. Please inform me, if there is anyone who can use the feature in version 7.