Maven deals with dependencies related to application builds. If I understand the article correctly, the author is suggesting a way of sanely managing dependenc

Maven deals with dependencies related to application builds. If I understand the article correctly, the author is suggesting a way of sanely managing dependencies related to deployment configurations. This might include subgraphs that represent the application builds on several nodes, but would also reference configuration files from app servers, web servers, etc. A first step might be to simply visualize the relationships in question. I have used GraphViz (http://graphviz.org/ http://graphviz.org/) to this end for a number of situations (internal corporate projects). I think the challenge is that the relationships (edges) of the graph do not all necessarily represent the same types of dependencies. Some would result in compile time errors, some run time errors, some would cripple a system, and some have little practical effect. I do like the idea of a simple declarative system representing a dependencies between components as a graph though.