DependencyManagement should allow <replaceWith> to manage use of re-named,
woven, instrumented or compatible artifacts
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Key: MNG-4391
URL: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-4391
Project: Maven 2
Issue Type: Improvement
Components: Dependencies
Affects Versions: 2.2.1
Reporter: Neale
[if only this was a later version of JIRA I'd have not lost all of what I just
typed, as I could use Mylyn instead of the web UI. here goes again...]
The challenge of using a different artifact instead of the one that is
specified in a POM that you are consuming is not an easy one.
Examples where this hits uses is:
- the artifact name and packaging changes that Spring made at 2.5.6A (which was
a big improvement)
- wanting to use SLF4J instead of Apache commons logging (i.e. use something
that provides the same API, but is an entirely different project)
- wanting to use your own derivation of a public artifact
- wanting to use a woven/instrumented version of a public artifact
The current approach to replacing, say org.springframework : spring-beans with
org.springframework : org.springframework.beans is to do ('scuse the shorthand):
{code:xml}
<dependencyManagement>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.sun.jersey.contribs</groupId>
<artifactId>jersey-spring</artifactId>
<exclusions>
org.springframework : spring-beans
</exclusions>
</dependency>
... repeat for every artifact that uses spring-beans, and then add more if
adding another artifact
</dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>
{code}
to exclude it, and then globally include the replacement using:
{code:xml}
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactid>org.springframework.beans</groupId>
<version>${spring.version}</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
{code}
This is error prone, and could be made far easier by an extension to
dependencies, which would remove the need to know what artifacts (jersey-spring
in the above example) use the artifact that you are replacing. Here's how it
would look:
{code:xml}
<dependencyManagement>
<!-- this declares the version we want to use if this artifact is in use -->
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactid>org.springframework.beans</groupId>
<version>${spring.version}</version>
</dependency>
<!-- This deals with artifact name change -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactid>spring-beans</groupId>
<replaceWith> <!-- list of dependency elements -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactid>org.springframework.beans</groupId>
</dependency>
<!-- more dependency elements could be added here if an artifact has
been split -->
</replaceWith>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
{code}
NOTE:
- Nothing is specified in <dependencies> so no artifacts are globally added
where they may not be needed. This means we can develop a project wide parent
pom.xml.
- Artifacts can have been split and merged
- Derived artifacts, such as instrumented ones can easily be substituted, and
could be selectively substituted using profiles.
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