Question

I am currently doing some cleanup of Java projects which use Maven, and use NetBeans IDE to ‘debug’ problems in the POM. I have set Maven 3.0.4 in the IDE as the Maven version, but other developers or our Continuous Intgeration system might have different settings.

Is it possible to ‘enforce’ a specific Maven version directly in the POM (for example by using a Maven 3 specific element)?

Answer 1

Yes you can and you should. Some Maven plugins requires Maven 3 or newer.

Use the maven-enforcer-plugin by adding the following to your pom.xml:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <inherited>true</inherited>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-enforcer-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>3.4.1</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>enforce-maven-version</id>
            <goals>
              <goal>enforce</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <rules>
                <requireMavenVersion>
                  <version>3.8.5</version>
                </requireMavenVersion>                
              </rules>
              <fail>true</fail>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
       </executions>
     </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>