Can maven projects have multiple parents?

Question

We have Java and Flex projects. We currently have 1 base pom that contains the configurations we want to use for both projects. Problem with this is: Flex projects inherit c

Answer 1

Even though maven projects have single parent, they can import any number of other pom's like this:

    
        
            org.example
            my-shared-dependencies
            0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
            pom
            import
        
    

This has two important differences compared to a parent:

1. Plugins defined in the imported pom won't be imported
2. Dependencies defined in the imported pom won't be added to the current pom, it will only import dependencies into the dependency management section

However if your parent pom has a < dependencies> section and you want to include those into your dependencies then you can add the parent to the dependencies section just like a regular dependency :

    org.example
    my-shared-dependencies
    0.0.1-SNAPSHOT

Even though the same dependency is already imported, the version tag has to be specified again. To reduce duplication, it can be stored in a property