Exclude all transitive dependencies of a single dependency

In Maven2, to exclude a single transitive dependency, I have to do something like this:

<dependency>
  <groupId>sample.group</groupId>
  <artifactId>sample-artifactB</artifactId>
  <version>1</version>
   <exclusions>
     <exclusion>
       <groupId>sample.group</groupId>
       <artifactId>sample-artifactAB</artifactId>
     </exclusion>
   </exclusions>
</dependency>

The problem with this approach is that I have to do this for every transitive dependency contributed by sample-artifactB.

Is there a way to use some sort of wildcard to exclude all transitive dependencies at once instead of one-by-one?

Solution 1:

What has worked for me (may be a newer feature of Maven) is merely doing wildcards in the exclusion element.

I have a multi-module project that contains an "app" module that is referenced in two WAR-packaged modules. One of those WAR-packaged modules really only needs the domain classes (and I haven't separated them out of the app module yet). I found this to work:

<dependency>
    <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
    <artifactId>app</artifactId>
    <version>${project.version}</version>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>*</groupId>
            <artifactId>*</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
</dependency>

The wildcard on both groupId and artifactId exclude all dependencies that normally would propagate through to the module using this dependency.

Solution 2:

For maven2 there isn't a way to do what you describe. For maven 3, there is. If you are using maven 3 please see another answer for this question

For maven 2 I'd recommend creating your own custom pom for the dependency that has your <exclusions>. For projects that need to use that dependency, set the dependency to your custom pom instead of the typical artifact. While that does not necessarily allow you exclude all transitive dependencies with a single <exclusion>, it does allow you only have to write your dependency once and all of your projects don't need to maintain unnecessary and long exclusion lists.