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  http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/ViewIssue.jspa?key=MAVEN-1172

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        Key: MAVEN-1172
    Summary: additional comment for dependencies in POM
       Type: Improvement

     Status: Unassigned
   Priority: Major

 Original Estimate: 30 minutes
 Time Spent: Unknown
  Remaining: 30 minutes

    Project: maven
 Components: 
             model additions
             model
   Versions:
             1.0-final
             1.1
             1.0-rc2

   Assignee: 
   Reporter: fabrizio giustina

    Created: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 3:09 PM
    Updated: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 3:09 PM

Description:
Actually there is no way for users to understand which dependency is required for 
running the application and which is required for running tests, or is optional and 
checked at runtime.

The default "dependencies" page states:
"The following is a list of dependencies for this project. These dependencies are 
required to compile and run the application:"

In many project you can see a long lists of jars, which are needed only for testing or 
compiling.
For example I often have lots of dependencies needed only to run tests: junit-addon, 
httpunit (which also requires to add jtidy, htmlnecko, rhino, jasper and its 
dependencies) and so on. Also logging libraries (commons-logging, log4j) could be used 
only in unit tests and not required to build or run the application.

Another situation is where a dependency is required to build the application but 
optional at runtime: for example to build FOP you need to have jimi and jai from sun. 
But at runtime the presence of these libraries is needed only if you want to use 
certain image formats.

At the end you can have a list of 10+ dependencies while, at runtime, your application 
doesn't really need anything!

I think there should be a way to inform a user WHEN (build, test, run) and WHY 
(needed, optional to add support for XXX) a library is needed.
This can also be needed by developers, which usually put xml comments in POM to 
describe why a dependency is there.

So at the end, I'm simply proposing to add an optional <comment> element (or "scope", 
or any other better name if you can find one) to the POM dependency element and 
display it the maven generated "dependencies" page.

This could (hope it will be) added also for the maven 1.0 branch, since it will be an 
optional, harmless, value.




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