Maven Central Search

Use Maven Central Repository Search from your command line!

Use mcs to quickly lookup dependency coordinates in Maven Central, without having to switch to your browser.

Usage

This tool supports the following modes of searching:

1. Wildcard search

   mcs search plexus-utils

   This will give you all artifacts in Maven Central that have "plexus-utils" in their name. The output is in a tabular form, showing the exact coordinate of each artifact and the moment when its latest version was deployed.
2. Coordinate search

   mcs search org.codehaus.plexus:plexus-utils
   mcs search org.codehaus.plexus:plexus-utils:3.4.1

   If there are multiple hits, you will get the same table output as above. But if there's only one hit, this will give you a pom.xml snippet for the artifact you searched for. Ready for copy & paste in your favourite IDE!
3. Class-name search

   mcs class-search CommandLine
   mcs class-search -f picocli.CommandLine

   This will give you all artifacts in Maven Central that contain a particular class. If you set the -f flag, the search term is considered a "fully classified" class name, so including the package name.

All modi recognise the -l <number> switch, which lets you specify how many results you want to see at most.

Installation

You can install mcs using the package manager of your choice:

Package manager	Platform	Installation	Remarks
Homebrew	🍎 🐧	brew install mthmulders/tap/mcs	⚠️ 1
Snap	🐧	snap install maven-central-search
SDKMAN!	🍎 🐧	sdk install mcs	ℹ️ 2
Chocolatey	🪟	choco install mcs --version=0.1.18	ℹ️ 3

1. The macOS and Linux binaries only work on x86_64 CPU's. If you have a Mac with Apple Silicon, you can use mcs through Rosetta.
2. There is no global alias (yet), so you have to run maven-central-search.mcs. Alternatively, you can define one in your favourite shell; alias mcs=maven-central-search.mcs should do.
3. For now, you have to specify the exact version when installing mcs. When the Chocolatey community has approved of the package, this requirement will be lifted.

Ideas for future development

• Proper support for multiple classifiers at a particular coordinate.
• Immediately copy the pom.xml snippet to the clipboard.
• Show the coordinates in a different form (Ivy, Gradle, SBT).