To answer your question, no you do not need to include all of the dependencies listed in the artifact dependencies section. It is my understanding that when you include a dependency in your pom
file, maven will automatically download any needed jars. I am inferring this due to the fact that I personally don't add any of the artifact's dependencies other than what I need to my pom
.
For example if I wanted spring-core I would do the following:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
<version>3.2.8.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
And maven will automatically take care of the dependencies for me.
A good way to test this out is to open a new maven project in eclipse and specify a dependency such as this, update the project, and then check in the Maven dependencies folder.
For fun, I experimented with this and it is indeed true, Maven will download any necessary dependencies when you update your project. After putting only the above dependency in my pom.xml
file I got the following: