How can I view transitive dependencies of a Maven pom.xml file?

Question

Is there a CLI tool I can use to quickly view the transitive dependencies of a Maven pom.xml file?

Solution

On the CLI, use mvn dependency:tree
(Here are some additional Usage notes)

When running dependency:tree on multi-module maven project, use mvn compile dependency:tree instead¹.

Otherwise, the POM Editor in M2Eclipse (Maven integration for Eclipse) is very good, and it includes a hierarchical dependency view.

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^{1If you don't compile, you might get error Failed to execute goal on project baseproject: Could not resolve dependencies for project com.company:childproject:jar:1.0.0: Could not find artifact. This might happen because dependency:tree command doesn't build projects and doesn't resolve dependencies, and your projects are not installed in maven repository.}

Comments

[Sridhar Sarnobat]

That's not really practical if you're trying to identify which transitive dependencies you are relying on at compile time. It just gives you a giant list of all transitive dependencies, used or not.

[kisna]

Also, to see conflict resolution among transitive dependencies, you will need to add verbose: mvn dependency:tree -Dverbose https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-dependency-plugin/exa‌​mples/resolving-conf‌​licts-using-the-depe‌​ndency-tree.html

[flow2k]

I think the verbose option suggested by @kisna is essential - otherwise, repeated transitive dependencies will not be drawn.

[flow2k]

Another caveat: if a project uses the Shade plugin, dependency:tree may not be able to draw its transitive dependencies.