Apache Maven Cookbook

Choosing the scope of dependency

We may use a dependency for many reasons. Some of them may be required to compile and run the projects. There might be others only to run tests (for instance, junit). Then there may be dependencies that are required at runtime, say logback.

How to do it...

Use the following steps to choose the scope of the dependency:

1. Open the Maven project we had created earlier.
2. Observe the following section:

   <dependencies>
       <dependency>
         <groupId>junit</groupId>
         <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
         <version>3.8.1</version>
         <scope>test</scope>
       </dependency>

3. Remove the preceding lines of code and run the following command:

   mvn compile
   

4. Observe that it runs without any issues.
5. Now, run the following command:

   mvn test
   

6. Note the following error:

   [INFO] ...