Guidelines for Multi-moduled Maven Project []

Moved to the page http://3rdstage.wikia.com/wiki/Tips_on_Maven in my wiki as of 23th Jul. 2012.

Guidelines for Multi-moduled Maven Project

Separate parent project from container project.

Define properties in the parent POM file as possible.

Define the following properties explicitly for clearness and control.

• Encoding related properties whose default value are dependent on platform.
• project.build.sourceEncoding
• project.reporting.outputEncoding
• Properties to skip situationally unnecessary long running goals.
• skipTests
• maven.javadoc.skip
• maven.deploy.skip
• checkstyle.skip
• Properties to run maven more stable way.
• dependency.locations.enabled : refer If your maven site build is too slow
• Paths for executable programs external to Maven
• graphviz.home

Define all plugins in the <pluginManagement> element of parent POM file.

• Don't specify version to plugin definitions in child POM files.

Define repositories in the parent POM file as possible.

Define plugins to analyze or diagnose the sources or resources of the project as a reporting plugin as possible.

Start values for path with ${project.basedir}, ${project.build.directory}, ${project.build.outputDirectory} or so on

• When just specifying relative path such as 'target/classes', the result directory could be different if you build the project from the enclosing project in multi-module case.
• If you specify the path with leading ${project.build.directory}, the resulting directory always would be one that is calculated with the current POM's project.

Use resources in target/classes not in src/main/resources, considering resource filtering.

Sample of Parent POM

This is the real sample of parent POM I am using.