Question

i am new to maven and work through a given pom. i found a section about a cubertura-maven-plugin in the build section of the pom.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>cobertura-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.4</version>
</plugin>

The question is wether this makes sense or not, since i expected this plugin to be configure in the reporting section.

Answer 1

It makes sense if you want to use cobertura data outside mvn site. Tools like sonar use cobertura this way.

By binding this plugin to a goal of your choice, you can use cobertura to do things like fail a build if there is inadequate coverage. See Configuring check section in this usage page.