How to copy dependencies to gae war/WEB-INF/lib - eclipse

Question

I'm coming from Ant perspective, so pardon me. I realise there are quite a few questions here already on how to maven dependencies, but none of them seem to tell how to do what need to do.
Question 1:
Currently, in conjunction with using maven-war-plugin, when I run mvn war:war, it creates a war folder in target folder.
However, I wish copy all the dependencies' jars to war/WEB-INF/lib set up by google eclipse plugin (with gae enabled, gwt disabled), without overwriting the jars that google eclipse plugin placed there.
I don't wish to setup a war file or war directory. I just need to copy/consolidate all the non-gae jars with the gae jars so that when the project is run as a gae web app, Eclipse would not complain ClassNotFoundException.
Question 2:
When using Ant in Eclipse, I could run Ant targets within Eclipse.
Right now, I have to perform mvn commands from a shell window (which is mutually oblivious to the existence of an Eclipse session). It appears that the only thing that is automatically done is whenever I update dependencies.
Is there a way, or any plugin for eclipse that would allow me to run mvn goals within Eclipse?
Additional info:
mvn dependency:copy-dependencies persists in copying to target/dependency directory, with the following:
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>copy-dependencies</id>
<phase>process-resources</phase>
<goals>
<goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<outputDirectory>${basedir}/war/WEB-INF/lib/</outputDirectory>
<overWriteReleases>false</overWriteReleases>
<overWriteSnapshots>false</overWriteSnapshots>
<overWriteIfNewer>true</overWriteIfNewer>
<excludeArtifactIds>gwt-user,gwt-dev</excludeArtifactIds>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
I even tried changing to absolute path
<outputDirectory>
/home/geek/eclipse/workspace/Demo-autoshoppe/holycow
</outputDirectory>
But holycow directory is still empty and mvn still persists in copying to target/dependency directory. My current solution is to softlink target/dependency as war/WEB-INF/lib, which is a very very bad kludge. Why is maven not sensitive to outputDirectory specification? I am using Ubuntu's maven 2.2.

Answer 1

I have the real answer for you, my man.
Use the "default-cli" execution id. Make sure you're using Maven 2.2+. This exec-id applies to command-line executions of the mojo.
<build>
<pluginManagement>
<plugins>
<!-- Copy dependencies to war/WEB-INF/lib for GAE proj compliance. -->
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>default-cli</id>
<goals>
<goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<outputDirectory>${basedir}/war/WEB-INF/lib/</outputDirectory>
<overWriteReleases>false</overWriteReleases>
<overWriteSnapshots>false</overWriteSnapshots>
<overWriteIfNewer>true</overWriteIfNewer>
<excludeArtifactIds>gwt-user,gwt-dev</excludeArtifactIds>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</pluginManagement>
</build>
Cheers.

Answer 2

An associate emailed me this answer which works. Trigger the follow through
mvn build or mvn package
but not directly thro mvn dependency:copy-dependencies.
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>copy-dependencies</id>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<outputDirectory>${basedir}/war/WEB-INF/lib/</outputDirectory>
<overWriteReleases>false</overWriteReleases>
<overWriteSnapshots>false</overWriteSnapshots>
<overWriteIfNewer>true</overWriteIfNewer>
<excludeArtifactIds>gwt-user,gwt-dev</excludeArtifactIds>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

Answer 3

Regarding #1: I'd suggest creating your maven project based off this plugin and archetype http://code.google.com/p/maven-gae-plugin/ (see the GWT based example if you are writing a GWT app for GAE).
Regarding #2: Check out m2eclipse plugin for full maven integration in eclipse. It's written by Sonatype (the creators of maven): http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/