Since Maven 3.2.1, a new feature called "Transitive dependency excludes" ( http://maven.apache.org/docs/3.2.1/release-notes.html ) is available. This allows to use "*" as a wildcard, to exclude all transitive dependencies without having to specify them.

However, NetBeans does not support this feature:
- in the "Source" view of pom.xml, it gives warnings:
       'dependencies.dependency.exclusions.exclusion.groupId' for com.mycompany:myartifact:jar with value '*' does not match a valid id pattern.
       'dependencies.dependency.exclusions.exclusion.artifactId' for com.mycompany:myartifact:jar with value '*' does not match a valid id pattern.
- in the "Graph" view of pom.xml, it still shows the excluded dependencies

PS: resolving this bug should go together with upgrading the Maven version that is bundled with NetBeans (at least to version 3.2.1, but preferably to 3.2.5+)