What would be a reason to set createDependencyReducedPom to false (maven-shade-plugin)?

Question

I've read a number of sources regarding the createReducedDependencyPom of the maven-shade-plugin:

• Is dependency-reduced-pom.xml automatically used instead of pom.xml?
• What is the purpose of dependency-reduced-pom.xml generated by the shade plugin?
• Maven shade plugin adding dependency-reduced-pom.xml to base directory
• https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-shade-plugin/shade-mojo.html#createDependencyReducedPom

I understand it will create a pom with the dependencies that were shaded removed, so as downstream dependencies on the shaded jar would not process again those dependencies that are accessible from the shaded jar.

Yet, I can't understand in which situation one would change the default value (true) to false.

Can anyone provide an example of when this is useful?

Answer 1

While having createDependencyReducedPom set to true is useful when using the shaded artifact (jar) as a dependency for other projects, I have recently encountered an issue where running my multi-module maven build in parallel with more than 1 thread would cause the maven-shade-plugin to go into an infinite loop and block the build forever.

Disabling the creation of dependency-reduced-pom files is the way to get around that issue for me.

Another reason why you wouldn't want to create dependency-reduced-pom is when the shaded jar being built is an application and not a library to be resued elsewhere.