Difference between force() and dependencyOverrides

[Sebastiaan Samyn]

We have a project that is at the same time dependent on akka 2.3.2 and kamon 0.3.5. When we package with sbt-pack (https://github.com/xerial/sbt-pack), we notice that it puts the akka-actor jar twice on the classpath (versions 2.3.2 and 2.3.6).

I was able to fix this using sbt 0.13.7 and the force() keyword, but it only works on that specific version. I was expecting that the dependencyOverrides setting would also work, but that's not the case, it still spits out both libraries. When we print out a dependency tree using sbt-dependency-graph (https://github.com/jrudolph/sbt-dependency-graph), then we also see both versions.

Could you explain what the difference is between between force() and dependencyOverrides?

[Sebastiaan Samyn]

Ignore my case, because it was slightly more complicated than described down here. Still, it would be interesting to know what difference is between the two and why force is discouraged in the documentation.

Thanks!