You have to specific the plugin dependency in the pom.xml if u want to use the installer task of AntInstaller in Maven.

Unfortunately, the ant-installer.jar and ant-installer-ext.jar cannot be found in default Maven repository. So u have to manually upload these 2 jars to the repository manager. If you have no idea about Maven repository manager, take a look at the following 2 articles.

• Maven – Archiva Installation
• Maven – Setup mirror to Archiva Repostory Manager

Let’s make AntInstaller work in Maven =).

Configure the maven-antrun-plugin in the pom.xml as follow.

<!-- Build Configuration -->
<build>
	<plugins>
		<plugin>
			<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
			<version>1.3</version>
			<dependencies>
				<dependency>
					<groupId>ant-installer</groupId>
					<artifactId>ant-installer</artifactId>
					<version>1.0</version>
				</dependency>
				<dependency>
					<groupId>ant-installer-ext</groupId>
					<artifactId>ant-installer-ext</artifactId>
					<version>1.0</version>
				</dependency>
			</dependencies>
			<executions>
				<execution>
					<id>initialize</id>
					<phase>initialize</phase>
					<configuration>
						<tasks>
							<!-- add the ant tasks from ant installer -->
							<taskdef name="installer" classname="org.tp23.antinstaller.taskdefs.Installer" />

							<!-- configure the isntaller task -->
							<installer file="../artifacts/selfextractpack.jar" compress="true"
									extractType="SelfExtractor"
									installConfig="../installer/antinstall-config.xml"
									buildFile="../installer/build.xml"
									antInstallLib="${installDir}/lib"
									antLib="${installDir}/antlib"
									validateConfig="true"
									failOnError="true"
									icons="bluecurve">
								<fileset dir="${demo.dir}/artifacts">
									<include name="installpack.zip"/>
								</fileset>
								<fileset dir="${demo.dir}/installclasspath">
									<include name="resources/*"/>
								</fileset>
							</installer>
						</tasks>
					</configuration>
					<goals>
						<goal>run</goal>
					</goals>
				</execution>
			</executions>
		</plugin>
	</plugins>
</build>

Put the AntInstaller required files such as the antinstall-config.xml, build.xml and those libraries in the corresponding location in your Maven project specified in the above pom.xml.

Now if u run mvn initialize, the installer build process will be triggered.

Done =)