Maven: how to override the dependency added by a library

Alternatively, you can just exclude the dependency that you don't want. STAX is included in JDK 1.6, so if you're using 1.6 you can just exclude it entirely.

My example below is slightly wrong for you - you only need one of the two exclusions but I'm not quite sure which one. There are other versions of Stax floating about, in my example below I was importing A which imported B which imported C & D which each (through yet more transitive dependencies) imported different versions of Stax. So in my dependency on 'A', I excluded both versions of Stax.

<dependency>
  <groupId>a.group</groupId>
  <artifactId>a.artifact</artifactId>
  <version>a.version</version>
  <exclusions>
    <!--  STAX comes with Java 1.6 -->
    <exclusion>
      <artifactId>stax-api</artifactId>
      <groupId>javax.xml.stream</groupId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
      <artifactId>stax-api</artifactId>
      <groupId>stax</groupId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
<dependency>

Simply specify the version in your current pom. The version specified here will override other.

Forcing a version
A version will always be honoured if it is declared in the current POM with a particular version - however, it should be noted that this will also affect other poms downstream if it is itself depended on using transitive dependencies.

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Resources :

• Dependency Mediation and Conflict Resolution
• Introduction to the Dependency Mechanism