Collect dependency information from pom.xml - maven-dependency-plugin

Question

I'd like to print a file containing listing of all the dependencies and their versions in my pom.xml. (no need to go inside of each dependency)
My ultimate goal is to have the dependency + version information listing in a file that can be read by the application at runtime and be displayed via "version info" link on a web page.
I found out there is a maven dependecy plugin | dependency:list, which I understand, should be doing pretty much what I want. I also manage it to print an output file, but it contains mainly gibberish. What I can make sense of it, it just has some kind of listing of the packages in the project. (no version info)
Could someone please clarify how to use this plugin correctly, or if it even does what I need it to do.
My configuration is same as in their usage instructions, but if try to use any optional parameters it fails always.

Answer 1

This looks like it is doing the right thing now. A version file is printed in 'target/classes' and I can find it when looking from the app at runtime.
In pom.xml (in build/plugins):
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.10</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>createVersionInfo</id>
<phase>compile</phase>
<goals>
<goal>list</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<artifactItems>
<artifactItem>
<groupId>com.company.project</groupId>
<artifactId>app-name</artifactId>
<version>${project.version}</version>
<type>war</type>
<overWrite>true</overWrite>
</artifactItem>
</artifactItems>
<sort>true</sort>
<includeScope>compile</includeScope>
<outputFile>target/classes/dependency_versions.txt</outputFile>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
The '<excludeScope>test</excludeScope>' does not work as supposed. It excludes everything. I think the explanation for includeScope explains this somehow.
An Empty string indicates all scopes (default).
The scopes being interpreted are the scopes as Maven sees them,
not as specified in the pom. In summary:
runtime - scope gives runtime and compile dependencies,
compile - scope gives compile, provided, and system dependencies,
test - (default) scope gives all dependencies,
provided - scope just gives provided dependencies,
system - scope just gives system dependencies.
And this piece of code on the java side will do pretty much what is needed:
InputStream in = this.getClass().getResourceAsStream("/dependency_versions.txt"); // Finds the file from classpath
String content = "";
// Java7 AutoCloseable
try (Scanner scan = new Scanner(in)) {
scan.useDelimiter("\\Z"); // Found this from another SO-thread, enables to read in the whole file at once
content = scan.next();
}
// Iterate the content and collect the information
// \n = line change
for (String row : content.split("\n")) {
row = row.trim();
// Basically removes the 1st two lines of the file that are not wanted
if (StringUtils.isEmpty(row) || row.endsWith(":")) {
continue;
}
StringTokenizer tokenizer = new StringTokenizer(row, ":");
String package = tokenizer.nextToken();
String dependency = tokenizer.nextToken();
String type = tokenizer.nextToken();
String version = tokenizer.nextToken();
String scope = tokenizer.nextToken();
}
I am actually populating a list of my own TO's there for showing the info in JSF, but I omit that part for simplicity/readability.
... Actually made me think why do I want to read in the whole file at once and not iterate it and read it one row at a time, but I'll leave it for the daily WTF. ;)