maven share dependencies among different modules

Question

I have a project with 5 modules.

2 of the modules have a dependency of hibernate. they are siblings and not parent child hence one cannot inherit another one\'s dep

Answer 1

Yes there is. Create a parent pom.xml with the shared hibernate dependency and add a parent declaration to your 2 modules:

<parent>
    <groupId>...</groupId>
    <artifactId>...</artifactId>
    <version>...</version>
    <relativePath>...path-to-parent.../pom.xml</relativePath>
</parent>

Declare the hibernate dependency in the dependencies section of your parent pom:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate</artifactId>
        <version>${hibernate.version}</version>
    </dependency>

Answer 2

Consider using a separate project to model the set of dependencies, and then depend on that project. This is more flexible than trying to model it in your parent hierarchy somehow.