Add a compile time only dependency in sbt

Question

I would like to add a dependency to an sbt project which is only used for compilation. Neither should it be on the runtime class path, nor should it be visible in any form in the published POM.

The idea is to add a stub only library (OrangeExtensions) so that the project can be compiled on any platform not just OS X.

Is it possible like this somehow:

libraryDependencies += "com.yuvimasory" % "orange-extensions" % "1.3.0" % ???

?

Answer 1

You can create a custom dependency configuration for this (actually, this is getting so common when you use private macros in your project, I wish SBT provided one).

In build.sbt:

// a 'compileonly' configuation
ivyConfigurations += config("compileonly").hide

// some compileonly dependency
libraryDependencies += "commons-io" % "commons-io" % "2.4" % "compileonly"

// appending everything from 'compileonly' to unmanagedClasspath
unmanagedClasspath in Compile ++= 
  update.value.select(configurationFilter("compileonly"))

That dependency will not appear in the pom.xml generated by publish and friends.

There almost is such a configuration available: the provided configuration. Except that provided ends up in the pom.xml as a dependency with provided scope. Also, provided means "the runtime itself provides this at runtime", not "this is not needed at runtime".