title: Maven-dependency-plugin and annotations with SOURCE RetentionPolicy
body: <p>In a mvn project where I am utilizing <code>maven-dependency-plugin</code> to detect unused dependencies, there is seemingly no dependency <code>scope</code> I can specify for Google's AutoValue (<code>com.google.auto.value:auto-value</code>) to that will convince the plugin that the dependency is being used in spite of the fact that annotations from the package are being used (e.g. <code>@AutoValue</code>) and the project won't build if <code>auto-value</code> is excluded.</p>
  
  <p>Now one solution is simply adding a configuration entry to my plugin:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;plugin&gt;
      &lt;groupId&gt;org.apache.maven.plugins&lt;/groupId&gt;
      &lt;artifactId&gt;maven-dependency-plugin&lt;/artifactId&gt;
      &lt;configuration&gt;
          &lt;usedDependencies&gt;
              &lt;usedDependency&gt;com.google.auto.value:auto-value&lt;/usedDependency&gt;
          &lt;/usedDependencies&gt;
      &lt;/configuration&gt;
  &lt;/plugin&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I would be curious to know whether it's possible to configure either the <code>maven-dependency-plugin</code> or the <code>dependency</code> entry for <code>auto-value</code> in a way that would detect usage of the dependency per its annotations?</p>
  
  <p>My suspicion is that this isn't possible because the <code>RetentionPolicy</code> of the annotations I'm using from auto-value are of <code>RetentionPolicy.SOURCE</code> and are discarded by the compiler.  Is this correct?</p>