Mastering Apache Maven 3

Get rid of unused dependencies

Always make sure that you maintain a clean application POM file. You should not have any unused dependencies defined or used undeclared dependencies. The Maven dependency plugin helps you identify such discrepancies.

The maven-dependency-plugin is not defined in the super POM and should be explicitly defined in your project POM file:

<plugin>
  <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.0</version>
</plugin>

Once the previous configuration is added into your application POM file, you need to run the analyze goal of the dependency plugin, against your Maven project:

$ mvn dependency:analyze

Here, you can see a sample output, which complains about an unused declared dependency:

[WARNING] Unused declared ...