Hello Maven developers, I'd like to propose an enhancement to how Maven handles dependencyManagement sections in the dependency resolution chain. Currently, Maven only honors the dependencyManagement section from the direct consumer POM, but I believe there would be significant benefits to honoring dependencyManagement declarations in intermediate POMs as well. # Current Situation When a project depends on an artifact that itself has a dependencyManagement section, Maven ignores that intermediate dependencyManagement during transitive dependency resolution. Only the root project's dependencyManagement is considered.
# Proposal Honor dependencyManagement sections throughout the dependency chain, allowing intermediate artifacts to manage versions of their related dependencies more effectively. # Example & Demonstration I've created a demonstration project that illustrates this scenario and the benefits of the proposed change: [1] The example shows a common pattern where a library wants to split from a monolithic JAR into multiple specialized modules while maintaining compatibility. # Benefits This change would provide two key improvements: 1. Version Alignment Across Related Modules Libraries that split into multiple artifacts (like commons-compress-tar, commons-compress, and commons-compress-core in my example) could ensure consistent versions across all their modules. The parent artifact could use dependencyManagement to guarantee that all related modules use compatible versions, preventing version mismatches that can cause runtime issues. 2. Simplified Migration Path for Library Modularization When libraries evolve from a single-jar to a multi-jar structure, this feature would allow them to: * Maintain backward compatibility without package renaming * Provide a smoother migration path for consumers * Reduce the burden on downstream projects during the transition #Real-World Impact Many projects face challenges when: * Large libraries want to modularize (users shouldn't need all modules) * Security or compatibility requires consistent versions across related artifacts * Projects need to evolve their structure without breaking existing consumers Well-known projects already use this pattern to align versions (see dependencyManagement): * JUnit [2] * Apache JMeter [3] I am sure Maven users would get better builds if Maven supported dependencyManagement for intermediate POMs. #Discussion Points I understand this would be a significant change to Maven's dependency resolution mechanism, and I'm interested in discussing: * Potential compatibility concerns * Whether this could be an opt-in feature initially * Alternative approaches to achieve similar goals Would the team be open to considering this enhancement? I'm happy to provide more detailed examples, help with implementation, or clarify any aspects of this proposal. [1]: https://github.com/vlsi/jarsplit [2]: https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/junit/jupiter/junit-jupiter-api/6.0.0/junit-jupiter-api-6.0.0.pom [3]: https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/apache/jmeter/ApacheJMeter_functions/5.6.3/ApacheJMeter_functions-5.6.3.pom Regards, Vladimir
