Can we make <optional>true</optional> by default? Or what I mean can we have instead a <mandatory>true</mandatory> instead of <optional>?

I fear that devs will forget to put <optional>. Again this matters for builds that group modules as dependencies, although are not really needed. On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 6:17 PM, Thomas Mortagne &lt;thomas.mortagne(a)xwiki.com&gt; wrote: > Hi devs, > > So we now have the concept of optional dependencies at Extension > Manager level. This are dependencies that are installed by default > (but if they fail they don't fail the whole install) and which can be > uninstalled without any impact on what is no longer it's backward > dependency. > > On Maven -> EM side what I did is reuse <optional>true</optional> > mostly the following reason: there is no way in pom.xml to put custom > stuff in <dependency> so it would be a huge pain to maintain a list of > optional dependencies from a property at general pom level. > > The issue is that the behavior of this <optional> is not exactly the > same in EM and Maven: in Maven those dependencies are NOT triggered by > default. Still, apart from this it's supposed to be the same meaning > and it should not be an issue to install this dependency (if it is > then it means you should have used something else like > <scope>provided</scope>) but as usually since there is no official way > in Maven to say "I just want to use that during the build and it does > not make any sens to get this dependency" some projects may have used > it that way. > > So do you think it is OK ? It's not acceptable and we absolutely need > to move this kind of information in some general property in the pom > <properties> ? > > -- > Thomas Mortagne >

Hi, I don’t really know. I hope it’s fine. We already have usages of the maven optional keyword in our POMs; will it work for those use cases? (haven’t checked but AFAIR it should work the same since we used those for optional deps in XAR modules but probably needs a closer look).

Thanks -Vincent