Is packaging type 'pom' needed when not using project aggregation (multimodule)?

Question

I want to inherit the dependencies of a (parent) pom.xml in a child project in Maven 2.2.1; i.e. use project inheritance. It seems it is necessary to change the def

Answer 1

If you're just wanting to inherit dependencies then I don't think it needs to be type 'pom'. You could have it jar and simply specify it as a dependency of the project which you have as child. However you wouldn't then have the parent/child relationship which is what prevents your parent project being a type other than 'pom'.

To be clear, you inherit the dependencies of all your dependencies ( transitive dependencies ).