In Ivy, how to choose the latest version of transitive dependencies?

Question

Is there a way to tell Ivy to prefer the latest version of a particular library among the transitive dependencies, without turning the transitive dependency into a direct dependency?

After retrieving the artifacts required for a build I end up with two versions of the same library, both as transitive dependencies. I've run a report so I know where the libraries are coming from but I'd prefer not to end up with references to transitive libraries in my ivy.xml file.

The Ivy manual states "If no specific conflict manager is defined, a default conflict manager is used for all modules. The current default conflict manager is the 'latest-revision' conflict manager". Apparently that doesn't apply to transitive dependencies.

Is there a way achieve what I want without directly referencing transitive libraries?

Answer 1

Transitive dependencies are dependencies of your dependencies, so conflicts can occur when one or more versions of the same library are referenced. This is where the conflict manager functionality kicks in. By default, ivy will choose the most recent version, working on the assumption that most libraries are backwardly compatible. If you review the report generated by the report task you'll see the other version(s) marked as "evicted".

Your question appears to put forward an alternative mode of operation? Perhaps an example would help.