Maven - Introduction to build and reporting plugins

Maven is a plug-in execution framework, the plug-ins are classifiers in two types:

• Build plugins will be executed during the build and then, they should be configured in the <build/> element.
• Reporting plugins will be executed during the site generation and they should be configured in the <reporting/> element.

Build plugins

An example of build plugin is:

    <project>
      ...
      <build>
        <plugins>
          <plugin>
            <groupId>it.blogspot.informaticaamodomio</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-mybuild-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.0</version>
            <configuration>
                <myString>a string</myString>
                <myBoolean>true</myBoolean>
                <myInteger>10</myInteger>
            </configuration>
          </plugin>
        </plugins>
      </build>
      ...
    </project> 

The example below uses the <executions> element, this element is used when the plug-in participates in some phases of the build lifecycle:

    <project>
      ...
      <build>
        <plugins>
          <plugin>
            <groupId>it.blogspot.informaticaamodomio</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-mybuild-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.0</version>
            <executions>
              <execution>
                <id>execution1</id>
                <phase>test</phase>
                <configuration>
                  <myString>a string</myString>
                  <myBoolean>true</myBoolean>
                  <myInteger>10</myInteger>
                </configuration>
                <goals>
                  <goal>mygoal</goal>
                </goals>
              </execution>
            </executions>
          </plugin>
        </plugins>
      </build>
      ...
    </project>

The id "execution1" binds this configuration to the test phase.
You could configure the dependencies of the Build plugins with <dependencies> element:

    <project>
      ...
      <build>
        <plugins>
          <plugin>
            <groupId>it.blogspot.informaticaamodomio</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-mybuild-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.0</version>
            <executions>
              <execution>
                <id>execution1</id>
                <phase>test</phase>
                <configuration>
                  <myString>a string</myString>
                  <myBoolean>true</myBoolean>
                  <myInteger>10</myInteger>
                </configuration>
                <goals>
                  <goal>mygoal</goal>
                </goals>
              </execution>
            </executions>
            <dependencies>
              <dependency>
                <groupId>it.blogspot.informaticaamodomio</groupId>
                <artifactId>my-app</artifactId>
                <version>1.0</version>
              </dependency>
            </dependencies>
          </plugin>
        </plugins>
      </build>
      ...
    </project>

By default, plugin configuration should be propagated to child POMs, so to break the inheritance, you could uses the <inherited> element:

    <project>
      ...
      <build>
        <plugins>
          <plugin>
            <groupId>it.blogspot.informaticaamodomio</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-mybuild-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.0</version>
            <inherited>false</inherited>
            .......
          </plugin>
        </plugins>
      </build>
      ...
    </project>

Reporting plugins

As first statement, configuring a reporting plugin in the <reporting> or <build> elements in the pom does not have the same behavior.
For example the "mvn site" uses only the parameters defined in the <configuration> element of each reporting Plugin specified in the <reporting> element, site always ignores the parameters defined in the <configuration> element of each plugin specified in <build>. So I suggest adding it only in <reporting> element.

You can configure a reporting plugin using the <reportSets> tag. This is most commonly used to generate reports selectively when running mvn site. Example:

<project>
...
  <reporting>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-project-info-reports-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>${plugin.version}</version>
        <reportSets>
          <reportSet>
            <reports>
              <report>project-team</report>
            </reports>
          </reportSet>
        </reportSets>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </reporting>
...
</project>

If you want exclude all reports, use the following reportSets configuration:

<reportSets>
    <reportSet>
        <reports/>
    </reportSet>
</reportSets>

As build plugins (for more information see [1]), you can use <inherited> element.

<inherited>false</inherited>

Internal Links

May be of interest to you:

1. Getting started java project with maven
2. How to deploing jars to your artifactory server
3. Introduction to Maven Pom structure
4. Maven - Introduction to the dependency management