Differences between dependencyManagement and dependencies in Maven

Question

What is the difference between dependencyManagement and dependencies? I have seen the docs at Apache Maven web site. It seems that a dependency def

Answer 1

Sorry I am very late to the party.

Let me try to explain the difference using mvn dependency:tree command

Consider the below example

Parent POM - My Project

<modules>
    <module>app</module>
    <module>data</module>
</modules>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
        <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
        <version>19.0</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

<dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
            <version>3.9</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

Child POM - data module

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
        <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Child POM - app module (has no extra dependency, so leaving dependencies empty)

 <dependencies>
</dependencies>

On running mvn dependency:tree command, we get following result

Scanning for projects...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reactor Build Order:

MyProject
app
data

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Building MyProject 1.0-SNAPSHOT
------------------------------------------------------------------------

--- maven-dependency-plugin:2.8:tree (default-cli) @ MyProject ---
com.iamvickyav:MyProject:pom:1.0-SNAPSHOT
\- com.google.guava:guava:jar:19.0:compile

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Building app 1.0-SNAPSHOT
------------------------------------------------------------------------

--- maven-dependency-plugin:2.8:tree (default-cli) @ app ---
com.iamvickyav:app:jar:1.0-SNAPSHOT
\- com.google.guava:guava:jar:19.0:compile

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Building data 1.0-SNAPSHOT
------------------------------------------------------------------------

--- maven-dependency-plugin:2.8:tree (default-cli) @ data ---
com.iamvickyav:data:jar:1.0-SNAPSHOT
+- org.apache.commons:commons-lang3:jar:3.9:compile
\- com.google.guava:guava:jar:19.0:compile

Google guava is listed as dependency in every module (including parent), whereas the apache commons is listed as dependency only in data module (not even in parent module)