Difference between maven scope compile and provided for JAR packaging

From the Maven Doc:

• compile

  This is the default scope, used if none is specified. Compile dependencies are available in all classpaths of a project. Furthermore, those dependencies are propagated to dependent projects.

• provided

  This is much like compile, but indicates you expect the JDK or a container to provide the dependency at runtime. For example, when building a web application for the Java Enterprise Edition, you would set the dependency on the Servlet API and related Java EE APIs to scope provided because the web container provides those classes. This scope is only available on the compilation and test classpath, and is not transitive.

Recap:

• dependencies are not transitive (as you mentioned)
• provided scope is only available on the compilation and test classpath, whereas compile scope is available in all classpaths.
• provided dependencies are not packaged

Compile means that you need the JAR for compiling and running the app. For a web application, as an example, the JAR will be placed in the WEB-INF/lib directory.

Provided means that you need the JAR for compiling, but at run time there is already a JAR provided by the environment so you don't need it packaged with your app. For a web app, this means that the JAR file will not be placed into the WEB-INF/lib directory.

For a web app, if the app server already provides the JAR (or its functionality), then use "provided" otherwise use "compile".

Here is the reference.

If you're planning to generate a single JAR file with all of its dependencies (the typical xxxx-all.jar), then provided scope matters, because the classes inside this scope won't be package in the resulting JAR.

See maven-assembly-plugin for more information