Maven is great and mature. There is always a solution on almost everything. The main case you might stumble on organisation projects is dependency management. Instead of each project having itβs own dependencies you want a centralised way to inherit those dependencies.
In those case you declare on the parent prom the managed dependencies. In my example I just want to include the Akka stream dependencies.
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 | <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>org.example</groupId> <artifactId>maven-dependency-management</artifactId> <packaging>pom</packaging> <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version> <properties> <akka.version>2.5.31</akka.version> <akka.http.version>10.1.11</akka.http.version> <scala.binary.version>2.12</scala.binary.version> </properties> <modules> <module>child-one</module> </modules> <dependencyManagement> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>com.typesafe.akka</groupId> <artifactId>akka-stream_2.12</artifactId> <version>${akka.version}</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.typesafe.akka</groupId> <artifactId>akka-http_2.12</artifactId> <version>${akka.http.version}</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.typesafe.akka</groupId> <artifactId>akka-http-spray-json_2.12</artifactId> <version>${akka.http.version}</version> </dependency> </dependencies> </dependencyManagement></project> |
What I use is the dependency management block.
Now the child project would be able to include those libraries without specifying the version. Having the version derived and managed is essential. Many unpleasant surprises can come if a version is incompatible.
Now on to the child module the versions are declared without the version since it is the child module.
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 | <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <parent> <artifactId>maven-dependency-management</artifactId> <groupId>org.example</groupId> <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version> </parent> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <artifactId>child-one</artifactId> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>com.typesafe.akka</groupId> <artifactId>akka-stream_2.12</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.typesafe.akka</groupId> <artifactId>akka-http_2.12</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.typesafe.akka</groupId> <artifactId>akka-http-spray-json_2.12</artifactId> </dependency> </dependencies></project> |
On another note sometimes we want to use another projectβs dependency management without that project being our parent. Those are cases where you need to include the dependency management from a parent project when you already have a parent project.
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 | <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>org.example</groupId> <artifactId>independent-project</artifactId> <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version> <dependencyManagement> <dependencies> <dependency> <artifactId>maven-dependency-management</artifactId> <groupId>org.example</groupId> <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version> <type>pom</type> <scope>import</scope> </dependency> </dependencies> </dependencyManagement> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>com.typesafe.akka</groupId> <artifactId>akka-stream_2.12</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.typesafe.akka</groupId> <artifactId>akka-http_2.12</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.typesafe.akka</groupId> <artifactId>akka-http-spray-json_2.12</artifactId> </dependency> </dependencies></project> |
As you can see in the block
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 | <dependencyManagement> <dependencies> <dependency> <artifactId>maven-dependency-management</artifactId> <groupId>org.example</groupId> <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version> <type>pom</type> <scope>import</scope> </dependency> </dependencies> </dependencyManagement> |
We included the dependency management from another project, which can be applied to inherit dependencies from multiple projects.
Published on Java Code Geeks with permission by Emmanouil Gkatziouras, partner at our JCG program. See the original article here: Dependency management and Maven Opinions expressed by Java Code Geeks contributors are their own. |
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Emmanouil GkatziourasJune 2nd, 2020Last Updated: June 1st, 2020

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