One thing I'm doing while doing the refactoring of the projects
is to "trim" the dependencies.

e.g. using optional and exclude such that consuming projects
don't pick up unnecessary dependencies.

javaassist is optional when using jboss-reflect

 <dependency>
 <groupId>org.jboss</groupId>
 <artifactId>javassist</artifactId>
 <version>3.6.0.GA</version>
<!-- HERE -->
 <optional>true</optional>
 </dependency>

Don't let jboss-common-core add unnecessary dependencies
(or choose an old logging-spi version ;-).

 <dependency>
 <groupId>org.jboss</groupId>
 <artifactId>jboss-common-core</artifactId>
 <version>2.2.3.GA</version>
 <exclusions>
 <exclusion>
 <groupId>jboss</groupId>
 <artifactId>jboss-common-logging-spi</artifactId>
 </exclusion>
 <exclusion>
 <groupId>apache-httpclient</groupId>
 <artifactId>commons-httpclient</artifactId>
 </exclusion>
 <exclusion>
 <groupId>apache-slide</groupId>
 <artifactId>webdavlib</artifactId>
 </exclusion>
 <exclusion>
 <groupId>apache-xerces</groupId>
 <artifactId>xml-apis</artifactId>
 </exclusion>
 </exclusions>

This kind of thing needs doing throughout the MC.

e.g. there is a JIRA task about making junit and jboss-test an optional
dependency since not everybody will want to use the MicrocontainerTest.