Multiple versions of the same dependency in Maven

Question

Is it possible to declare multiple versions of the same dependency in a Maven repo?

I need these dependencies all at once:

    <dependency>         <groupId>org.bukkit</groupId>         <artifactId>craftbukkit</artifactId>         <version>1.7.9-R0.2</version>         <scope>compile</scope>     </dependency>     <dependency>         <groupId>org.bukkit</groupId>         <artifactId>craftbukkit</artifactId>         <version>1.7.2-R0.3</version>         <scope>compile</scope>     </dependency>     <dependency>         <groupId>org.bukkit</groupId>         <artifactId>craftbukkit</artifactId>         <version>1.6.4-R2.0</version>         <scope>compile</scope>     </dependency> 

Because each of them contains a different package I care about:

org.bukkit.craftbukkit.v1_6_R3

org.bukkit.craftbukkit.v1_7_R1

org.bukkit.craftbukkit.v1_7_R3

If I declare dependencies as shown in the first snippet, only the last one will take effect. Is there any way to achieve this in Maven?

@Edit Any workaround, maybe?

Answer 1

No. Maven will only resolve one dependency in your module and will omit the other versions to avoid any conflict. Even if multiple versions of the same dependency are used in the whole dependency hierarchy, Maven will pick one version using the "nearest in the dependency tree" strategy.

It is possible to specify different dependency versions using different profiles. For each version of Bukkit a profile can be defined and activated. Still if you activate more than one profile, only one version would be used.

<profiles>     <profile>         <id>Bukkit_1_7_9_R02</id>         <activation>             ...         </activation>         <dependencies>             <dependency>                 <groupId>org.bukkit</groupId>                 <artifactId>craftbukkit</artifactId>                 <version>1.7.9-R0.2</version>                 <scope>compile</scope>             </dependency>         </dependencies>     </profile>     <profile>         <id>Bukkit_1_7_2_R03</id>         <activation>             ...         </activation>         <dependencies>             <dependency>                 <groupId>org.bukkit</groupId>                 <artifactId>craftbukkit</artifactId>                 <version>1.7.2-R0.3</version>                 <scope>compile</scope>             </dependency>         </dependencies>     </profile>     ... </profiles>