Maven and dependent modules
build-process, java, maven-2
Solution
A reason I can think of that your desired behaviour hasn't been implemented is as follows:
Suppose I'm working on both projects A and B. Currently A is broken. If dependency resolution happened as you would like, I would never be able to build B until A was fixed. So I either have to roll back my changes to A, or focus on fixing A first. Either way possibly not what I want to focus on right now.
Generally B wants to work with the "last good" version of A, rather than the latest. Using the dependencies from the repository means they at least compiled ok (and hopefully the unit tests were run too).
Problem
Colleagues have been touting the wonders of maven and its magical dependency stuff but I'm finding that it fails at what I would consider the obvious use. Suppose I have a root folder with a master POM. Then underneath I have some projects, call them A and B B requires A and so the POM in the B folder has the appropriate dependency entry in it Now, back in the root folder, in a profile, I specify that I want to build B. When I perform the usual mvn clean install, I get a failure because A was not built. My friends tell me I have to specify both A and B in that main profile in the root. But isn't the whole point of dependency management that maven sees B, goes to the B POM file where it sees the dependency on A and so it should go build A automatically.