Get the dependency tree of a maven project with a missing dependency

Question

First of all, let me start by saying mvn dependency:tree does not work in my scenario. I'm working on an already existing codebase which is giving a build failure. The issue was that the maven repos (including nexus) does not have a POM for a transitive dependency (org.apache.ws.security:wss4j:pom:1.5.2) in this project.

I want to find where this dependency came from. It's probably a transitive dependency, because it isn't listed in the project's pom nor in parent poms. Invoking mvn dependency:tree does not work because it also fails with the same error I get when I use mvn install (Connection timeout). The error is given below.

So, how can I identify which dependency tries to download this pom? I'd like a general answer to find the dependency tree rather than focusing on wss4j pom stated above.

[INFO]                                                                         
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Sample/XKMS 4.5.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Downloading: http://ws.zones.apache.org/repository2/org/apache/ws/security/wss4j/1.5.2/wss4j-1.5.2.pom

[WARNING] The POM for bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk13:jar:132 is invalid, transitive dependencies (if any) will not be available, enable debug logging for more details
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 3:10.155s
[INFO] Finished at: Wed Mar 14 10:35:20 IST 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 7M/490M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal on project wso2appserver-samples-xkms: Could not resolve dependencies 
for project org.wso2.appserver:wso2appserver-samples-xkms:jar:4.5.0-SNAPSHOT: Failed to collect dependencies for [org.wso2.xkms:xkms:jar:2.2 (compile)]: Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.apache.ws.security:wss4j:jar:1.5.2: 
Could not transfer artifact org.apache.ws.security:wss4j:pom:1.5.2 from/to ws-zones-repository (http://ws.zones.apache.org/repository2): Error transferring file: Connection timed out -> [Help 1]

Answer 1

mvn dependency:tree --debug

outputs the tree before failing in my case.

Answer 2

One way to find this out, is to install the m2eclipse Maven plugin for Eclipse. (If you have and are using Eclipse, that is.) The name is unrelated to the version; it works happily with at least Maven 2.2.1 and 3.

http://www.eclipse.org/m2e/

Then, open your root pom in Eclipse, and click on the Dependency Hierarchy tab. On the right-hand side will be all the dependencies the project will download, and on the left is what dependencies ask for what. If a dependency says (managed from X), it means another dependency wants a different version of this dependency This isn't flawless, however. I still had too look at some of the other poms to find the dependency I was looking for. But it should make life easier, and at least point you in the right direction.