You can use dependency:analyze -DignoreNonCompile
This will print a list of used undeclared and unused declared dependencies (while ignoring runtime
/provided
/test
/system
scopes for unused dependency analysis.)
runtime
are considered as unused **As others have said, you can use the dependency:analyze goal to find which dependencies are used and declared, used and undeclared, or unused and declared. You may also find dependency:analyze-dep-mgt useful to look for mismatches in your dependencyManagement section.
You can simply remove unwanted direct dependencies from your POM, but if they are introduced by third-party jars, you can use the <exclusions>
tags in a dependency to exclude the third-party jars (see the section titled Dependency Exclusions for details and some discussion). Here is an example excluding commons-logging from the Spring dependency:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring</artifactId>
<version>2.5.5</version>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
Have you looked at the Maven Dependency Plugin ? That won't remove stuff for you but has tools to allow you to do the analysis yourself. I'm thinking particularly of
mvn dependency:tree
I had similar kind of problem and decided to write a script that removes dependencies for me. Using that I got over half of the dependencies away rather easily.
http://samulisiivonen.blogspot.com/2012/01/cleanin-up-maven-dependencies.html
The Maven Dependency Plugin will help, especially the dependency:analyze
goal:
dependency:analyze
analyzes the dependencies of this project and determines which are: used and declared; used and undeclared; unused and declared.
Another thing that might help to do some cleanup is the Dependency Convergence report from the Maven Project Info Reports Plugin.
Source: Stackoverflow.com