Keep Central first!

By cstamas (@cstamas) |
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Just an advice: when using Maven 3 (and 4) you do want to make sure Central is always first remote repository Maven would “consult”. Just add following snippet(s) to your user-wide settings.xml:

  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <id>oss-development</id>
      <repositories>
        <repository>
          <id>central</id>
          <url>https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/</url>
          <releases>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
            <updatePolicy>never</updatePolicy>
          </releases>
          <snapshots>
            <enabled>false</enabled>
          </snapshots>
        </repository>
      </repositories>
      <pluginRepositories>
        <pluginRepository>
          <id>central</id>
          <url>https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/</url>
          <releases>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
            <updatePolicy>never</updatePolicy>
          </releases>
          <snapshots>
            <enabled>false</enabled>
          </snapshots>
        </pluginRepository>
      </pluginRepositories>
    </profile>
  </profiles>

  <activeProfiles>
    <activeProfile>oss-development</activeProfile>
  </activeProfiles>

With this in your user with Maven settings, Maven will take care to keep Central first.

By default, Maven kees Remote Repositories ordered (like in a POM, it obeys the order), but globally, they are assembled like this:

  • settings/env
  • project POM
  • Maven defaults

This implies, that IF you are building a project whose POM contains even one repository stanza (and not having env like that above) that is not Central, the POM defined repository will take precedence over Central. And many times, this is NOT what you want.

Things like itr option or using Maven RRF would be next things to consider.

Last modified August 17, 2025: Update Hugo (d5ee12e)