This is the case of servlet API/J2EE, and perhaps some libraries provided by the final JDK but not compiling JDK. It's not that they are compile-only - it's that they may be provided for you at runtime. They are still required at runtime.
All we really need to change is to ensure:
- they are not bundled when they target an environment where it will be provided (always the case for servlet/J2ee/etc type JARs).
- they are not used from plugins where the plugin provides them (eg, mock servlet api tests)
Current options seem to be:
- a "container" scope that implies compile, runtime and test, but can be excluded easily from bundling
- exclusions on a per plugin basis
- a full implementation of specification dependencies would allow the plugins to exclude based on the specifications by default
- this is a bit limited as you would always have to add weblogic specific ones, for example
- change to independant scopes which is more or less what you are proposing
- I've listed a couple of downsides to this previously