Details
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Type:
New Feature
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Status:
Open
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Priority:
Major
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Resolution: Unresolved
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Affects Version/s: 2.0.9
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Fix Version/s: 3.2
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Component/s: Dependencies
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Labels:None
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Complexity:Intermediate
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Number of attachments :
Description
This JIRA proposes a feature. I'm willing to try to contribute it given a modicum of encouragement and guidance.
Over at CXF, we get many questions from users who are completely confounded by the complex dependency graph that results from our many dependencies and their many dependencies. I think that they would be less confused by far if maven gave them a tiny bit of help.
The first part of the idea requires an addition to the core POM, which is why I'm starting with a JIRA here. I propose to add an 'explanation' element to the dependency element. This would contain a human-readable string explaining why the dependency is here.
The second part is a goal that I would propose to call 'dependency-map'. This would produce a formatted map of the dependency tree – enriched, of course, by the comments in the first part.
Changing the POM format is definitely a huge deal and is something that seems to be constantly discussed on the dev list.
Adding stuff to the poms currently breaks users of any previous version of Maven, which is not ideal as many corporations and such are adverse to upgrading. There is an opinion of some people that anything deployed in central needs to be completely readable and usable by all versions of maven.
I'm wondering if instead of adding another element (and thus changing the pom schema/format), the parser could just be updated to save any comments in the dependency element. All old versions would just ignore it.
For the second part, that would be an enhancement of the dependency:tree plugin:
http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-dependency-plugin/tree-mojo.html