Maven Dependency Management vs. Dependencies – Understanding the Difference

Maven dependencyManagement vs. dependencies: What's the Difference?

The Maven build system is an incredibly powerful tool that helps developers automatically manage their project’s build, versioning, and dependencies. As such, it requires a great deal of understanding in order to maximize its potential. One important concept to understand is the relationship between Maven’s dependency management elements: dependencyManagement and dependencies.

At a high level, the dependencyManagement section of the project’s pom.xml file serves as a repository of dependency information. It describes what versions of each artifact is used throughout the project, and serves as a convenient reference. Additionally, it allows developers to specify different versions of the same artifact in different locations within the project. This is often useful when dealing with complex multi-module projects.

On the other hand, the dependencies element of the pom.xml file actually defines which artifacts are required for a given module. For example, the addition of a dependency element to the pom.xml of a particular module will tell the build system to include that artifact in the module. As such, it’s usually more important to understand the actual semantics of the dependencies element rather than the dependencyManagement element.

In short, Maven’s dependencyManagement element serves to simplify the project’s pom.xml files by providing a reference of available artifacts and their allowed versions. On the other hand, the dependencies element actually defines which artifacts are to be used by a given module. It’s important to understand the difference between the two in order to maximize the power of the Maven build system.