[maven] Excluding Maven dependencies

Global exclusions look like they're being worked on, but until then...

From the Sonatype maven reference (bottom of the page):

Dependency management in a top-level POM is different from just defining a dependency on a widely shared parent POM. For starters, all dependencies are inherited. If mysql-connector-java were listed as a dependency of the top-level parent project, every single project in the hierarchy would have a reference to this dependency. Instead of adding in unnecessary dependencies, using dependencyManagement allows you to consolidate and centralize the management of dependency versions without adding dependencies which are inherited by all children. In other words, the dependencyManagement element is equivalent to an environment variable which allows you to declare a dependency anywhere below a project without specifying a version number.

As an example:

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>commons-httpclient</groupId>
      <artifactId>commons-httpclient</artifactId>
      <version>3.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
      <version>3.0.5.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
        <exclusions>
          <exclusion>
            <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
          </exclusion>
        </exclusions>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>commons-httpclient</groupId>
        <artifactId>commons-httpclient</artifactId>
        <exclusions>
          <exclusion>
            <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
          </exclusion>
        </exclusions>
      </dependency>
    </dependencies>
  </dependencyManagement>

It doesn't make the code less verbose overall, but it does make it less verbose where it counts. If you still want it less verbose you can follow these tips also from the Sonatype reference.