RemoveDependency doesn't remove the dependency if one of its part is defined with properties

[svaningelgem]

What version of OpenRewrite are you using?

• OpenRewrite master branch

How are you running OpenRewrite?

via the test suite, adding this test in java/org/openrewrite/maven/RemoveDependencyTest.java:

    @Test
    void removeDependencyDefinedWithProperties() {
        rewriteRun(
          spec -> spec.recipe(new RemoveDependency("junit", "junit", null)),
          pomXml(
            """
              <project>
                <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
              
                <groupId>com.mycompany.app</groupId>
                <artifactId>my-app</artifactId>
                <version>1</version>
              
                <properties>
                  <junit.groupId>junit</junit.groupId>
                </properties>
              
                <dependencies>
                  <dependency>
                    <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
                    <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
                    <version>29.0-jre</version>
                  </dependency>
                  <dependency>
                    <groupId>${junit.groupId}</groupId>
                    <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
                    <version>4.13.1</version>
                    <scope>test</scope>
                  </dependency>
                </dependencies>
              </project>
              """,
            """
              <project>
                <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
                
                <groupId>com.mycompany.app</groupId>
                <artifactId>my-app</artifactId>
                <version>1</version>
                
                <dependencies>
                  <dependency>
                    <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
                    <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
                    <version>29.0-jre</version>
                  </dependency>
                </dependencies>
              </project>
              """
          )
        );
    }

What did you expect to see?

That the test works :-)

What did you see instead?

That there were no changes to the template, even though I expected junit to be removed.

What is the full stack trace of any errors you encountered?

No stacktrace, just no changes done.

Are you interested in contributing a fix to OpenRewrite?

I'll try to look into it.

[svaningelgem]

The issue is that inside MavenVisitor::findDependency, it will call tag.getChildValue. Which will return the literal child value. And not the one interpreted with properties.
I think this tag.getChildValue method should interpret properties to return the real value.

However, this is going very deep inside the XML reading features and might have numerous repercussions.

What would your advice be?

[timtebeek]

We saw a possibly similar change today when changing annotation processors in 000a4f0. Look for the getResolutionResult().getPom().getValue(oldVersion) to see how we resolve placeholders fairly easily from values that might contain placeholders. I hope that helps & all the best going into 2025!