How to copy dependencies jars (without test jars) to a directory using maven?

Mike answered their own question in a comment above. I think Mike’s use case is similar to mine where I want to copy all of the jars I depend upon as well as my own jar in order to create a directory hierarchy sufficient to execute the program without including those dependencies directly into my own jar.

The answer to achieve this is:

<includeScope>compile</includeScope>

This directive goes into the section of the pom.xml for the maven-dependency plugin. For example:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.4</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>copy-dependencies</id>
            <phase>prepare-package</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/lib</outputDirectory>
                <includeScope>compile</includeScope>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

excludeScope won’t work because excluding test aborts the build and excludes all possible scopes. Instead the included scope needs to be adjusted.