How to exclude older versions of maven dependency and use new version of it?

Question

I am working with Maven project and I have two projects, ProjectA and ProjectB. My ProjectA is a maven library whose pom looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"
    xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <parent>
        <groupId>com.texture.partial</groupId>
        <artifactId>PartialPlatform</artifactId>
        <version>2.1.5-RELEASE</version>
    </parent>

    <groupId>com.texture.transform.golden</groupId>
    <artifactId>SampleClient</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.4</version>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.google.code.gson</groupId>
            <artifactId>gson</artifactId>
            <version>2.2.4</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.texture.partial.core</groupId>
            <artifactId>PartialKernel</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.texture.webres</groupId>
            <artifactId>WebResPartial</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet.jsp</groupId>
            <artifactId>jsp-api</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.texture.kernel</groupId>
            <artifactId>TextureServer</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.texture.kernel</groupId>
            <artifactId>Kernel</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.texture.v3jars.Houston</groupId>
            <artifactId>KernelDAL</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.texture.kernel</groupId>
            <artifactId>uKernel</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.texture.kernel</groupId>
            <artifactId>uKernelCore</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-asm</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-expression</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-aop</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>aopalliance</groupId>
            <artifactId>aopalliance</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.servicemix.bundles</groupId>
            <artifactId>org.apache.servicemix.bundles.cglib</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.texture.partial.core</groupId>
            <artifactId>ConfigWeb</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.texture.partial.core</groupId>
            <artifactId>PartialWeb</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.googlecode.jmockit</groupId>
            <artifactId>jmockit</artifactId>
            <version>1.7</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <argLine>-javaagent:"${settings.localRepository}"/com/googlecode/jmockit/jmockit/1.7/jmockit-1.7.jar</argLine>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>cobertura-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <instrumentation>
                        <excludes>
                            <exclude>**/test/**/*.class</exclude>
                        </excludes>
                    </instrumentation>
                    <formats>
                        <format>xml</format>
                        <format>html</format>
                    </formats>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

In my above pom, PartialKernel is bringing older version of various Spring Framework dependencies like spring-core, spring-web. It is bringing 3.2.8.RELEASE version and I want to use latest version of those two spring framework, which is 4.1.6.RELEASE. What is the right way to exclude older versions of spring-core and spring-web coming from PartialKernel and use latest version?

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.6.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.6.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>

I need to use latest version since some classes are there in latest version only.

Answer 1

There may be incompatible differences between the version of a library that a dependency requires and the one you want to use. If you are happy to take this risk, you can use maven exclusions to ignore transitive dependencies.

You can exclude, for example, spring-core from being brought in by PartialKernel by adding:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.texture.partial.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>PartialKernel</artifactId>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
</dependency>

Note that you will have to do this for every dependency that brings in spring dependencies.

Now define the version of spring-core you want to use in the top level pom dependency management section:

<dependencyManagement>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.6.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
   </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>