Scenario:
I have a main level project A and within A , two child projects B and C worked on by different developers , but they agree on the abstraction through comm
If you want to build B and automatically build it's dependencies you can use the advanced options of the maven reactor like –-also-make-dependents .
mvn clean install –-projects B –-also-make
Or short
mvn clean install -pl B -am
That will compile all submodules of A whose B depends on . There are a useful post on sonatype blog on the advanced options of maven reactor. http://www.sonatype.com/people/2009/10/maven-tips-and-tricks-advanced-reactor-options/