Maven dependency management for plugin dependencies

Question

Recently, I came accross the following problem :

As I set up dependency management for my project, I had child-pom using plugin with dependencies, that I want to be synchronized with dependencies declared in my dependency management.

In a root pom, I declared in my dependency management:

<dependencyManagement>     <dependencies>       ...         <dependency>             <groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>             <artifactId>gwt-user</artifactId>             <version>2.4.0</version>         </dependency>       ...     <dependencies> <dependencyManagement> 

And in the child pom, I have a plugin which needs gwt-user :

<plugin>     <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>     <artifactId>gwt-maven-plugin</artifactId>     <version>2.4.0</version>     <dependencies>         <dependency>             <groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>             <artifactId>gwt-user</artifactId>             <version>2.4.0</version>         </dependency>             ...         </dependencies>   ... </plugin> 

However, if I remove the dependency version used in gwt-maven-plugin, the compilation fails.

Is there another way to achieve it ?

PS: There is a related post Choosing dependency version in maven and maven plugin which does not answer my question

Answer 1

According to the following links, it seems not to be possible:

• http://maven.40175.n5.nabble.com/dependency-management-within-plugin-dependencies-td78367.html
• https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MNG-2496

Here is a workaround I found, and I wanted to share with everyone, in case other people had the same problem:

In my root pom, I have defined a property, a dependency management and a plugin management:

<properties>     <gwtVersion>2.4.0</gwtVersion>     <gwtMavenPluginVersion>2.4.0</gwtMavenPluginVersion> </properties>  <dependencyManagement>    <dependencies>     ...     <dependency>         <groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>         <artifactId>gwt-user</artifactId>         <version>${gwtVersion}</version>     </dependency>     ...    </dependencies> </dependencyManagement>  <build>       <pluginManagement>         <plugins>             <plugin>             <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>             <artifactId>gwt-maven-plugin</artifactId>             <version>${gwtMavenPluginVersion}</version>             <dependencies>                 <dependency>                     <groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>                     <artifactId>gwt-user</artifactId>                     <version>${gwtVersion}</version>                 </dependency>                 ...             </dependencies>             ...         </plugins>   ...   </pluginManagement> </build> 

And in my child pom, using the relationship provided by plugin management (see Maven2 - problem with pluginManagement and parent-child relationship), I just declare the plugin dependency:

<plugin>    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>    <artifactId>gwt-maven-plugin</artifactId> </plugin> 

Now if I change the version in the properties, it is automatically impacting all direct dependencies and plugin dependencies.

Answer 2

For a parent POM to control which plugin versions the child uses, you should declare the <plugin> in a <pluginManagement> section of the parent POM.

You defined com.google.gwt:gwt-user as a <dependency> in the <dependencyManagement> section.

I'm not sure if you are intending to use gwt-user as a plugin or as a dependency, but it should be listed as the same entity in both for inheritance to work.