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

As noted by Pascal, the behaviour is correct.

If you're still looking for means to share dependencies between modules, you can consider bundling up the dependencies in question into a pom, and then having your modules both depend on that new "dependencies" pom.

See Maven Book Section 3.6.1 for more details.