Dependency Management

About

In a Maven project, Dependency Management refers to the process of declaring, handling, and resolving external libraries required for the application to function. Maven provides a structured way to fetch, version, and control dependencies automatically.

Responsibilities of Dependency Management

• Automatically downloads required JARs from repositories.

• Ensures compatibility by managing dependency versions.

• Resolves transitive dependencies (dependencies of dependencies).

• Helps in conflict resolution, scoping, and exclusions.

• Allows centralizing dependency versions using BOM (Bill of Materials).

How Maven Handles Dependencies?

Maven dependencies are declared in the pom.xml file. Maven uses these declarations to:

1. Download the correct versions of required JARs.

2. Check for transitive dependencies (dependencies of the declared dependencies).

3. Determine the scope of dependencies (Compile, Runtime, Test, etc.).

4. Handle conflicts if different versions of the same dependency exist.

Example of a Basic Dependency Declaration:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    <version>3.0.0</version>
</dependency>

Maven will fetch all required dependencies, including transitive dependencies, for spring-boot-starter-web.

Why is Dependency Management Important?

• Ensures application stability by avoiding conflicting versions.

• Reduces manual effort in downloading and managing JARs.

• Keeps projects modular and maintainable.

• Improves performance and security by enforcing tested versions.