Why and/or when to avoid intransitive() or notTransitive()?

Question

I currently have an SBT subproject that needs a dependency only at compile-time, so I think it's a good place to use intransitive so that projects that use it won't need to download that dependency.

However, according to the SBT reference manual:

In some instances, you may find that the dependencies listed for a project aren’t necessary for it to build. Projects using the Felix OSGI framework, for instance, only explicitly require its main jar to compile and run. Avoid fetching artifact dependencies with either intransitive() or notTransitive()

The wording is a bit confusing because it discourages the use of transitive() or notTransitive() without explaining why or when (all the time?).

Answer 1

I think you're just misreading the sentence. "Avoid fetching artifact dependencies with either intransitive() or notTransitive()" is intended to mean "If you want to avoid fetching artifact dependencies, the way to do this is with either intransitive() or notTransitive()".

Answer 2

intransitive is discouraged because :

• downstream users don't see it in their POM and it might break their runtime,
• even if they know what dependency to add, its version won't be synced with upstream.

provided is reserved for when the dependency is expected to be in the runtime, e.g. an application container.

I would reserve intransitive for cases where the dependency is not needed in the runtime, only at compile-time. e.g. compiler annotations