Maven Dependency Plugin: Copy only test dependencies

Question

I have already assembled all runtime dependencies for my project in one output directory using the Maven Dependency plugin. Now I would like to assemble all additional test dependencies in a separate directory.

But when I include scope test and exclude either compile or runtime scope, it still always copies all compile dependencies as well.

Is there a way to copy only the additional test dependencies?

My current configuration:

<plugin>
     <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
     <executions>
        <execution>
           <id>copy-test-libs</id>
           <phase>generate-test-resources</phase>
           <goals><goal>copy-dependencies</goal></goals>
           <configuration>
              <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/test-libs</outputDirectory>
              <includeScope>test</includeScope>
              <excludeScope>compile</excludeScope>
              <excludeTransitive>true</excludeTransitive>
           </configuration>
        </execution>
     </executions>
</plugin>

Answer 1

The includeScope parameter, by default, is empty which means it includes all scopes and the excludeScope is, by default, empty.

When you specify <includeScope>test</includeScope>, it means that you want to include all dependencies (of all scopes). This setting seems to be different that the default empty value and I guess the maven-dependency-plugin is confused when both <excludeScope> and <includeScope> are used: it includes everything and does not exclude the specified scopes.

You need to remove includeScope and let excludeScope do it's job.