Support non-required dependencies
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Key: MNG-2270
URL: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-2270
Project: Maven 2
Type: New Feature
Components: Dependencies
Versions: 2.0.4
Reporter: Felipe Leme
One feature I miss on Maven is the possibility of setting a dependency as
non-required. Let me explain an use case that would make it clearer: I'm
migrating dbunit to use Maven 2 (it uses Maven 1 currently) and in order to
compile it, either you use JDK 1.4+ or you add the javax.sql-jdbc-std-2.0
dependency (dbunit requires JDK 1.3).
In other words, there is currently no way to build dbunit out-of-the box - you
have to either install the dependency manually (which is fine when cutting a
release or on CI builds) or comment the dependency in the POM (which is not
cool for occasional users of the framework - it goes against the 'just type mvn
and wait' philosophy).
So, what I think it would be nice is if I could declare that dependency as
non-required (I would say 'optional', but that already has another meaning): if
Maven cannot download that dependency, it would continue the build (of course,
if Maven is ran using JDK 1.3, it would fail; but in most cases, it would
suceed). It should be something like this:
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.sql</groupId>
<artifactId>jdbc-stdext</artifactId>
<version>2.0</version>
<required>false</required>
</dependency>
Or, even better, I could use a logic expression:
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.sql</groupId>
<artifactId>jdbc-stdext</artifactId>
<version>2.0</version>
<required>${java.version == 1.3}</required>
</dependency>
Or in a more powerful way:
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.sql</groupId>
<artifactId>jdbc-stdext</artifactId>
<version>2.0</version>
<required>${versionLessThan( java.version, '1.3' }</required>
</dependency>
Is that any plan to provide such a feature on Maven 2.1? I think the scenario
makes sense and it appers to be easy to implement (at least the initial
alternative that only accepts literals).
-- Felipe
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