Need a way to turn off transient fetching of libraries

We need a way to turn off transient retrieval of stuff in the ant tasks. If, for example, I ask for commons-logging-1.04, the runtime pulls down everything ever used in it
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: commons-logging/commons-logging/1.0.4/commons-logging-1.0.4.pom
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 7K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: commons-logging/commons-logging/1.0.4/commons-logging-1.0.4.pom.md5
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: avalon-framework/avalon-framework/4.1.3/avalon-framework-4.1.3.pom
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: avalon-framework/avalon-framework/4.1.3/avalon-framework-4.1.3.pom.md5
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: junit/junit/3.7/junit-3.7.pom
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: junit/junit/3.7/junit-3.7.pom.md5
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: log4j/log4j/1.2.6/log4j-1.2.6.pom
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: log4j/log4j/1.2.6/log4j-1.2.6.pom.md5
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: logkit/logkit/1.0.1/logkit-1.0.1.pom
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: logkit/logkit/1.0.1/logkit-1.0.1.pom.md5
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: logkit/logkit/1.0.1/logkit-1.0.1.jar
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 70K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: logkit/logkit/1.0.1/logkit-1.0.1.jar.md5
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: log4j/log4j/1.2.6/log4j-1.2.6.jar
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 342K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: log4j/log4j/1.2.6/log4j-1.2.6.jar.md5
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: junit/junit/3.7/junit-3.7.jar
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 114K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: junit/junit/3.7/junit-3.7.jar.md5
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: avalon-framework/avalon-framework/4.1.3/avalon-framework-4.1.3.jar
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 62K
[artifact:dependencies] Downloading: avalon-framework/avalon-framework/4.1.3/avalon-framework-4.1.3.jar.md5
[artifact:dependencies] Transferring 0K

As a consequence, the classpath is then set up wrong. And if we copy the contents of that path (e.g. into the lib dir of a WAR, we end up with conflicting JAR files).

Another example, if if declare a dependency on jaxen-1.1beta6. That was built against dom4j-1-5.2. That doesnt have an entry in the maven2 repository, so the build fails. Yet all jaxen needs is a JAXP parser, for which xerces works perfectly well.

I've looked at the scope attribute, and it seems that transience is certainly noted as a problem, but I'm not sure that works. What I really need is a transient=on/off attribute, so I can run with transience off when I am being 100% explicit about all my dependencies.