Outputting dependency resolution/tree in a well known _machine readable_ output format

Currently (at least on trunk) one can output the dependencies in a file. However the file output doesn't follow any specific format, except from being the exact same output than on the console.

I would be nice to have an easily parse-able, format so that tools could leverage the dependency resolution/tree. I am thinking for example of continuous integration tools that could report on added/removed/updated dependencies on modules.

The format could be xml, json or something else. I've been playing with the current output to make it so that:

• the first line describes the current module for which dependency resolution is done, formatted as such: <groupId>:<artifactId>:<packaging>:<version>
• every following line is a dependency (indented by 2 or more spaces), formatted as such: <groupId>:<artifactId>:<packaging>:<version>:<scope>

This already is easy to parse.

What do you think?