How to avoid "The job exceeded the maximum time limit for jobs, and has been terminated." when accessing mvnsearch.org on Travis CI?

A couple of actions may be done:

1. The Common Build Problems: My builds are timing out - Travis CI answer provides a couple of solutions. One of them is «to extend the wait time» for the Maven process.
2. Enable caching of the Maven dependencies: Caching Dependencies and Directories: Caching directories (Bundler, dependencies): Arbitrary directories - Travis CI.
3. Use a repository manager: «act as dedicated proxy server for public Maven repositories».
   Additional references:
   1. Nexus example:
      • Maven Repositories - Nexus Repository Manager 3 - Sonatype Help. See «Browsing and Searching Maven Repositories» (general information) and «Configuring Apache Maven» (settings.xml-related information) sections.
      • «User manual» for the use case: Using Nexus 3 as Your Repository – Part 1: Maven Artifacts | TheNEXUS.
   2. The general question: How does one mirror a maven repository?.

Enabling caching on Travis CI by adding

cache:
  directories:
  - $HOME/.m2

to .travis.yml turned out to be not the solution at all or only a temporary one (for approx. 40 builds over the last week; because mvnsearch.org became available again or for other reasons hard to figure out), I found the following more promising solution (which is way easier than setting up a Nexus repository manager instance which can be used as a mirror):

Add

- echo -e '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>\n<settings xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.1.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.1.0.xsd" xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.1.0"\n    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">\n  <mirrors>\n    <mirror>\n      <id>mvnsearch-unavailable</id>\n      <name>mvnsearch-unavailable</name>\n      <mirrorOf>mvnsearch</mirrorOf>\n      <url>http://repo1.maven.org/maven2</url>\n    </mirror>\n  </mirrors>\n  <profiles>\n    <profile>\n      <id>no-mvnsearch</id>\n      <repositories>\n        <repository>\n          <id>mvnsearch</id>\n          <url>http://www.mvnsearch.org/maven2</url>\n          <releases>\n            <enabled>true</enabled>\n          </releases>\n          <snapshots>\n            <enabled>true</enabled>\n          </snapshots>\n        </repository>\n      </repositories>\n    </profile>\n  </profiles>\n  <activeProfiles>\n    <activeProfile>no-mvnsearch</activeProfile>\n  </activeProfiles>\n</settings>' > $HOME/.m2/settings.xml
- cat $HOME/.m2/settings.xml

to .travis.yml which will override uses of http://www.mvnsearch.org/maven2 in any hard to control transitive dependency and use the Maven central repository http://repo1.maven.org/maven2 which covered all dependencies in my case (it might not in other cases).

Note that Murphy's Law applies as it does to anything: Maven 3.1.1 ignores this setting even though it claims to use the mirror in its debug output (ouch!).

The build is now 7 minutes faster than it was with the temporary working caching solution.