Handling dependency download errors

There could be situations when a dependency might not be downloaded due to network problems or other issues. Sometimes, the error reported by Maven might not indicate the problem. It is good to know how to get around this problem.

How to do it...

It is difficult to simulate this problem in a normal scenario, but we can create a contrived scenario, by using the following steps:

1. Modify the dependency version for JUnit in our simple project:

   <version>3.9.1 </version>

2. Run the following command:

   mvn verify
   

3. This will attempt to download the dependency and fail (as the version is invalid):

   [INFO] Building simple-project 1.0-SNAPSHOT
   [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Downloading:https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/junit/junit/3.9.1/junit-3.9.1.pom
   [WARNING] The POM for junit:junit:jar:3.9.1 is missing, no dependency information available
   Downloading:https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/junit/junit/3.9.1/junit...