Maven brings "test" transitive dependency as "compile"

Question

When I run "mvn dependency:tree" for my project it shows the following:

[INFO] --- maven-dependency-plugin:2.8:tree (default-cli) @ xxxxx ---
[INFO] com.xxx.xxx:xxxxx:war:3.1.0-SNAPSHOT
...
[INFO] +- commons-configuration:commons-configuration:jar:1.5:compile
[INFO] |  \- commons-beanutils:commons-beanutils-core:jar:1.7.0:compile
[INFO] +- org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-api:jar:2.34.0:test
[INFO] |  +- com.google.guava:guava:jar:14.0:test
[INFO] |  \- org.json:json:jar:20080701:test
[INFO] +- org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-htmlunit-driver:jar:2.34.0:test
[INFO] |  +- org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-remote-driver:jar:2.34.0:test
[INFO] |  |  +- cglib:cglib-nodep:jar:2.1_3:test
[INFO] |  |  +- net.java.dev.jna:jna:jar:3.4.0:test
[INFO] |  |  \- net.java.dev.jna:platform:jar:3.4.0:test
[INFO] |  \- net.sourceforge.htmlunit:htmlunit:jar:2.12:test
[INFO] |     +- org.apache.commons:commons-lang3:jar:3.1:test
[INFO] |     +- org.apache.httpcomponents:httpmime:jar:4.2.3:test
[INFO] |     +- net.sourceforge.htmlunit:htmlunit-core-js:jar:2.12:test
[INFO] |     +- xerces:xercesImpl:jar:2.10.0:test
>>>[INFO] |     |  \- xml-apis:xml-apis:jar:1.4.01:compile
[INFO] |     +- net.sourceforge.nekohtml:nekohtml:jar:1.9.18:test
[INFO] |     +- net.sourceforge.cssparser:cssparser:jar:0.9.9:test
[INFO] |     |  \- org.w3c.css:sac:jar:1.3:test
[INFO] |     \- org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-websocket:jar:8.1.9.v20130131:test
[INFO] +- org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-firefox-driver:jar:2.34.0:test
...

As you see on the marked line, the xml-apis has "compile" scope, and as result it is packed into .war file. Why could it happen?

More interestingly it happens only while Java5 is used, for Java6 the dependency appears as "test".

Maven version: 3.0.4

Answer 1

Study the output of the following Maven command.

mvn -X dependency:tree -Dverbose

That should tell you why Maven upgraded the scope from test to compile.