One other "I've spent too much time on this" question. I've been working with Maven for years, so understand it pretty well. But this particular combination of options has always stumped me.
I've read http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-optional-and-excludes-dependencies.html, and I've read http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-dependency-mechanism.html#Dependency_Scope . Suppose I have a dependency in test scope. OK, I get that. It will be included on my test classpath. Now suppose someone depends on me. First suppose they depend on me in compile scope. I know that my test dependency does not end up on their compile classpath. But does my test dependency get downloaded to their local repository? If it does not, is there any sense in having a dependency declared like this: <dependency> <groupId>whatever</groupId> <artifactId>whatever</artifactId> <version>whatever</version> <scope>*test*</scope> <optional>*true*</optional> </dependency> ...? Another way to ask this: doesn't test scope sort of imply "optional"? (If the answer is "no", I'd appreciate some kind of reasoning if it's not too much trouble.) Best, Laird -- http://about.me/lairdnelson
