According to the following links, it seems not to be possible:
- http://maven.40175.n5.nabble.com/dependency-management-within-plugin-dependencies-td78367.html
- https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MNG-2496
Here is a workaround I found, and I wanted to share with everyone, in case other people had the same problem:
In my root pom, I have defined a property, a dependency management and a plugin management:
<properties>
<gwtVersion>2.4.0</gwtVersion>
<gwtMavenPluginVersion>2.4.0</gwtMavenPluginVersion>
</properties>
<dependencyManagement>
<dependencies>
...
<dependency>
<groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>
<artifactId>gwt-user</artifactId>
<version>${gwtVersion}</version>
</dependency>
...
</dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>
<build>
<pluginManagement>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>gwt-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${gwtMavenPluginVersion}</version>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>
<artifactId>gwt-user</artifactId>
<version>${gwtVersion}</version>
</dependency>
...
</dependencies>
...
</plugins>
...
</pluginManagement>
</build>
And in my child pom, using the relationship provided by plugin management (see Maven2 – problem with pluginManagement and parent-child relationship), I just declare the plugin dependency:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>gwt-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
Now if I change the version in the properties, it is automatically impacting all direct dependencies and plugin dependencies.