Running a specific Maven plugin goal from the command line in a sub-module of a multi-module reactor project

Question

I\'m looking for a general technique here, but let\'s give a specific example. I have a multi-module project and I\'d like to run the exec:java goal from the co

Answer 1

A somewhat general technique that I've used in this circumstance is to define a profile in the submodule POM in question that binds exec:java to the test phase. For example:

                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                       
    test-java                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                        
          org.codehaus.mojo                                                                                  
          exec-maven-plugin                                                                            
          1.1.1                                                                                              
                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                     
              test                                                                                               
                                                                                                                         
                java                                                                                               
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                 
                com.foo.bar.MyClass                                                                      
                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                     

Then from the top of your project, run:

mvn test -Ptest-java

This will set up the inter-module classpath as usual, and attempt to run the test-java profile in all of your subprojects. But since only the one you care about has the profile defined, it's the only one that will do anything.

It does take a wee bit of extra time for Maven to grind through your other subprojects NOOPing, but it's not so bad.

One thing to note is that the subproject is run with the top-level directory as the current working directory (not the subproject directory). There's not much you can do to work around that, but hopefully that won't cause you trouble.