In Maven, how can I exclude all transitive dependencies from a particular dependency?

Question

I want to exclude all transitive dependencies from one dependency. In some places I've seen it suggested to use a wildcard for that

<dependency>
  <groupId>myParentPackage</groupId>
  <artifactId>myParentProject</artifactId>
  <version>1.00.000</version>            
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
        <groupId>*</groupId>
        <artifactId>*</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>

When I do that I get a warning:

'dependencies.dependency.exclusions.exclusion.groupId' for myParentPackage:myParentProject:jar with value '*' does not match a valid id pattern. @ line 146, column 30

The declaration itself is successful though: The transitive dependencies really are ignored in my build.

I've also found a old feature request that does request exactly this feature

So now I don't know if this is a deprecated feature that I shouldn't use, if the warning's wrong, or of the feature hasn't been completely implemented yet (I'm using Maven 3.0.4) ...Does anybody know more about this?

Answer 1

This is a supported feature in Maven 3.2.1 - see 'Transitive dependency excludes' section in the release notes.

Answer 2

I hate getting Maven warnings myself. I've seen the wildcard approach but have avoided it. Run a mvn dependency:tree goal, discover the top-level dependencies belonging to the artefact in question and exclude each one individually (hopefully the list isn't so vast). This is by far the safest way to approach this problem.