Extraneous pom.xml dependencies in jboss-common and others

[genman]

I've been building my project against the snapshot release of JBoss Microcontainer using Maven and there's 28 libraries that get pulled in, and some of them seem fairly non-relevant to runtime.

Most of the issues are due to transitive dependencies. Here are a list of dependencies I end up with:

? ant\ant\1.6.5\ant-1.6.5.jar
? apache-httpclient\commons-httpclient\2.0.2\commons-httpclient-2.0.2.jar
? apache-slide\webdavlib\2.0\webdavlib-2.0.jar
apache-xerces\xercesImpl\2.7.1\xercesImpl-2.7.1.jar
apache-xerces\xml-apis\2.7.1\xml-apis-2.7.1.jar
jboss\jboss-common-core\2.0.4.GA\jboss-common-core-2.0.4.GA.jar
jboss\jboss-common-logging-log4j\2.0.4.GA\jboss-common-logging-log4j-2.0.4.GA.jar
jboss\jboss-common-logging-spi\2.0.4.GA\jboss-common-logging-spi-2.0.4.GA.jar
jboss\jboss-logging-spi\2.0.3.GA\jboss-logging-spi-2.0.3.GA.jar
? jboss\jboss-test\1.0.4-SNAPSHOT\jboss-test-1.0.4-SNAPSHOT.jar
jboss\jboss-vfs\2.0.4.snapshot\jboss-vfs-2.0.4.snapshot.jar
jboss\jbossxb\2.0.0.CR3\jbossxb-2.0.0.CR3.jar
? jboss\profiler\jvmti\jboss-profiler-jvmti\1.0.0.CR5\jboss-profiler-jvmti-1.0.0.CR5.jar
? org\apache\ant\ant-junit\1.7.0\ant-junit-1.7.0.jar
? org\apache\ant\ant-launcher\1.7.0\ant-launcher-1.7.0.jar
? org\apache\ant\ant\1.7.0\ant-1.7.0.jar
org\jboss\javassist\3.6-beta\javassist-3.6-beta.jar
org\jboss\jboss-aop\2.0.0-SNAPSHOT\jboss-aop-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
org\jboss\microcontainer\jboss-aop-mc-int\2.0.0-SNAPSHOT\jboss-aop-mc-int-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
org\jboss\microcontainer\jboss-container\2.0.0-SNAPSHOT\jboss-container-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
org\jboss\microcontainer\jboss-dependency\2.0.0-SNAPSHOT\jboss-dependency-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
org\jboss\microcontainer\jboss-kernel\2.0.0-SNAPSHOT\jboss-kernel-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
oswego-concurrent\concurrent\1.3.4\concurrent-1.3.4.jar
? qdox\qdox\1.6\qdox-1.6.jar
sun-jaf\activation\1.0.2\activation-1.0.2.jar
trove\trove\2.1.1\trove-2.1.1.jar
wutka-dtdparser\dtdparser121\1.2.1\dtdparser121-1.2.1.jar

Projects with (potential) extraneous dependencies:

jboss-commons-core: Pulls in apache-httpclient and apache-slide:webdavlib. Seems like the "web" portion of commons belongs someplace else.
jboss-aop: Pulls in Ant, plus qdox. These are compile tools, but not needed for runtime, I think.
org.jboss.microcontainer: compile depends on junit, probably should be "test"

I'm not sure why I end up with jboss-test, seems like the Maven2 plugin from Eclipse might be confused.

I'm going to see if I can't fix the microcontainer dependencies, I hope nobody gets mad.

A useful tool I've found is: http://www.jfrog.org/sites/dep-analyzer/1.0/ , but only seems to work when built from source. The GUI maps out where the dependencies you get come from, so you can follow the chain.

[starksm64]

The jboss-commons-core dependency on the webdav lib I do agree should be a separate jar, and ultimately be part of the vfs if anything.

qdox is used at runtime for parsing aop expressions on annotations as far as I know. The ant tasks should be better factored out of the main artifact, but its not a real runtime dependency.

The mc test dependencies on junit, jboss-test and profiler should only require test scope.

[genman]

The following document says you can indicate some pom.xml dependencies as optional:

http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-optional-and-excludes-dependencies.html

Adrian clarified that some classes (for unit testing) as part of src/main/java extend junit.framework.TestCase and the JBoss test classes.

See http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBMICROCONT-198

Although these test classes could be refactored out, perhaps using an (optional)true(/optional) would be effective as well.