Question

I’d like to mvn install:install-file artifact A excluding artifact X.

A does not depend directly on X, yet down the dependency tree there are several dependencies for X.

What would be the command to perform this?

Answer 1

If you just run install:install-file on a jar file without -DpomFile=something, it will create a pom with no dependencies, so there’s nothing to exclude. The ‘X’ dependency won’t be represented at all.

If you pass in a pom file via -DpomFile=POMFILE, then you have the dependency structure in there, and it can include whatever exclusions you need. If you put in a dependency on X, and it in turn depends on Y, you can add an exclusion to the X dependency.

A comment from the OP suggests that this has nothing to do with install:install-file.

There is some artifact ‘A’ with a rich and complex dependency tree, which transitively reaches some artifact ‘B’ at many points. How do cope with B not being available if, in fact, it’s not actually needed in the classpath?

The only solution here is to add exclusions to the POMs that reference A. Instead of trying to change the pom of A to exclude B, you have to add the exclusion of B in your own poms as part of the dependency on A. There’s no other way.