How to use POMs as a dependency in Maven?

Question

Is there a way to add a pom type dependency to my POM and get all its modules?

JavaMail is a good example. Maven Central Repo has a parent POM called:

Answer 1

I believe you can create your own POM which aggregates the dependencies you want, and then in your original project add a dependency on that aggregate pom. You will still have to add dependencies on each individual module in your dependency POM, but it will be abstracted from the actual project POMs and allows those dependencies to be managed in one place, which could become useful if you end up having multiple projects that depend on that set of dependencies.

In your example you could create a new pom like this:

    4.0.0

    com.mycompany
    mail-deps
    1.0.0
    pom

    
        
            com.sun.mail
            mail
            1.5.0
        
        
            com.sun.mail
            mailapi
            1.5.0
        
        
            com.sun.mail
            mailapijar
            1.5.0
        
        
            com.sun.mail
            imap
            1.5.0
        
        
            com.sun.mail
            gimap
            1.5.0
        
        
            com.sun.mail
            pop3
            1.5.0
        
        
            com.sun.mail
            dsn
            1.5.0
        
    

Then in your original project just add:

 ...
 
   src/main/java/com/mycompany
 
 ...
 
     
         com.mycompany
         mail-deps
         1.0.0
         pom