Maven modules are trying to use parent dependencies - maven

Question

I have a maven project where the parent module has a lib directory containing various jars that are necessary for compilation, but aren't included in the final product. When I try to get the children modules to build it fails. It says "The following artifacts could not be resolved" then eventually says "Could not find artifact local_dependency at C:\path\to\project\modules\module_name\lib\local_dependency.jar".
The children modules do not depend on the libraries that the parent uses, however it still wants to include them. Is there an option I need to set to prevent this?
Parent Pom snippet:
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<currentVersion>1.0.0</currentVersion>
</properties>
<groupId>com.project</groupId>
<artifactId>project_artifact</artifactId>
<packaging>pom</packaging>
<version>${currentVersion}</version>
<modules>
<module>modules/module_name</module>
</modules>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>group.id</groupId>
<artifactId>local_dependency</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<systemPath>${basedir}/lib/local_dependency.jar</systemPath>
<scope>system</scope>
<optional>true</optional>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
Child pom snippet:
<parent>
<groupId>com.project</groupId>
<artifactId>project_artifact</artifactId>
<version>${currentVersion}</version>
<relativePath>../../</relativePath>
</parent>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>net.some.dependency</groupId>
<artifactId>artifact_name</artifactId>
<version>1.0.0</version>
<type>jar</type>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.project</groupId> <!-- The child depends on the parent for the parent's API-->
<artifactId>project_artifact</artifactId>
<version>${currentVersion}</version>
<type>jar</type>
</depdencency>
</dependencies>
So from this, the child pom will attempt to include group.id:local_dependency from project_base/modules/module_name/lib/local_dependency.jar but it doesn't exist and doesn't need to exist.

Answer 1

You can exclude specific transitive dependencies in the dependency declaration. In your case, the following change in the child pom's dependency on the parent should get the build working:
<dependency>
<groupId>com.project</groupId> <!-- The child depends on the parent for the parent's API-->
<artifactId>project_artifact</artifactId>
<version>${currentVersion}</version>
<type>jar</type>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>group.id</groupId>
<artifactId>local_dependency</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>

Answer 2

The child inherits the parent's dependencies, whether or not you include the dependency explicitly. Two possible ways to resolve the issue are:
Don't build any jar artifact in the parent - create a sub-module for this and use the sub-module as a dependency in its siblings.
Use a fixed path (not relative to ${basedir}, since this changes in each module build, which tries to resolve the location anew). If you always build from the parent's directory, you could use ${user.dir}.