Is there a way to exclude a Maven dependency globally?

I’m trying to find a “generic” way of excluding a transitive dependency from being included without having to exclude it from all the dependencies that depend on it. For example, if I want to exclude slf4j, I do the following:

  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
    <artifactId>hibernate-jmx</artifactId>
    <version>3.3.2.GA</version>
    <exclusions>
      <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
      </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
  </dependency>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
    <artifactId>hibernate-entitymanager</artifactId>
    <version>3.4.0.GA</version>
    <type>jar</type>
    <exclusions>
      <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
      </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
  </dependency>

This is partly to clean up the pom file, partly to avoid issues in the future with people adding dependencies that depend on that excluded dependency — and forgetting to exclude it.

Is there a way?

Does this help? http://jlorenzen.blogspot.com/2009/06/maven-global-excludes.html

"Assuming I want to exclude avalon-framework from my WAR, I would add the following to my projects POM with a scope of provided. This works across all transitive dependencies and allows you to specify it once.

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
      <artifactId>avalon-framework</artifactId>
      <groupId>avalon-framework</groupId>
      <version>4.1.3</version>
      <scope>provided</scope>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

This even works when specifying it in the parent POM, which would prevent projects from having to declare this in all child POMs."

I created an empty jar and created this dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
    <scope>system</scope>
    <systemPath>${basedir}/src/lib/empty.jar</systemPath>
    <version>0</version>
</dependency>

It is not perfect because from now on you have an empty jar in your compile/test path. But that is just cosmetic.

To expand on dnault's comment:

One can use the Maven Enforcer plugin's Banned Dependencies rule to ensure dependencies are excluded. One still has to exclude them manually, but the build will fail if anyone adds the dependency elsewhere by mistake.

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
    <artifactId>hibernate-jmx</artifactId>
    <version>3.3.2.GA</version>
    <exclusions>
      <exclusion>
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
      </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

<plugins>
  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-enforcer-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.4.1</version>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <goals>
          <goal>enforce</goal>
        </goals>
        <configuration>
          <rules>
            <bannedDependencies>
              <excludes>
                <exclude>org.slf4j:slf4j-api</exclude>
              </excludes>
            </bannedDependencies>
          </rules>
        </configuration>
      </execution>
    </executions>
  </plugin>
</plugins>

Also there is an open feature request: MNG-1977 Global dependency exclusions

Is there a way to exclude a Maven dependency globally?

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