Maven: xpp3 versus xpp3_min

Question

In my Java Maven project, two of my codes direct dependencies use a sub-dependency of XPP3. However, one of them has the artifact ID xpp3 while the other one has the artifact ID xpp3_min. Both are version 1.1.4c. Does anyone know the difference between the two? My project allows both to be dependencies without marking either of them as excluded due to conflict.

Home page for XPP3 project: http://www.extreme.indiana.edu/xgws/xsoap/xpp/

Maven repository reference: http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/xpp3/xpp3_min and http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/xpp3/xpp3. Notice how both projects have the same description. I don't just want to naively assume that _min is a minimal version due to its name suffix.

Answer 1

I've opened both archives and the xpp3_min only includes the XmlPullParser.class and XmlPullParserException.class (and MXParser.class). It doesn't include other classes like XmlPullParserFactory etc...

A popular obj <-> xml serialzer package: XStream, has both a dependency on XPP3_MIN and XMLPULL, where XMLPULL implements the XmlPullParserFactory. If it had a dependency on XPP3 it sure would have a classloading issue.