Exclude classes from a dependency in Maven

Question

I have a project which depends on an artifact which is controlled by a supplier. This artifact contains some classes that I depend on, and some which are older and causing problems. Is there a way to get maven to automatically expand a jar, remove classes, and re-package them as a dependency? I'll try to give an example.

supplier:artifact:1.0.0
com.supplier.useful.ClassA
com.supplier.dto.ClassB (old)

us:dependency:1.1.20
com.supplier.dto.ClassB (new)

us:project-web:1.1.20
- supplier:artifact:1.0.0
- us:dependency:1.1.20

So - I need to use ClassA in project-web, but I need to use the ClassB from the dependency artifact. I can't modify supplier:artifact, or us:dependency.

Any ideas?!

Answer 1

Since version 2.0.9 maven preserves the classpath ordering so if you define your patched classes in a jar BEFORE the supplier jar it will hide the supplier implementation.

Alternatively you can look at the maven shade plugin as it does exactly what you are asking according to me.