Dependency management for modules

You've probably seen one or more module(s) that says in its documentation that there is a dependency to another module. Also, modules with Java actions often depend on Java libraries which are put in the userlib folder, but don’t get deleted when you remove the module or when you import a new version of the module which uses other (versions of) libraries.

My suggestion is to build in some kind or dependency management in the modeler for modules and their libraries. In the Java development community, developers often use Apache Maven or Gradle.

For example: I would like to be able to create my module and configure that it depends on the Community Commons module and the Apache Commons Lang Java library. The modeler then automatically downloads the dependencies for me. Unused Java libraries are removed from the userlib folder. After publishing or exporting the module, the modeler does the same thing on import of the module into another project.

Currently, after importing different (versions of) modules, the userlib directory can contain multiple versions of the same library. 
For example the Apache Commons Codec library:

• commons-codec-1.9.jar
• commons-codec-1.10.jar
• org.apache.commons.codec_1.9.0.jar
• org.apache.servicemix.bundles.commons-codec-1.3.0.jar

It's time consuming to figure out which one to keep.