Question

I created maven project with command line:

mvn archetype:generate 
   -DarchetypeRepository=repo1.maven.org 
   -DarchetypeGroupId=org.codehaus.mojo 
   -DarchetypeArtifactId=gwt-maven-plugin 
   -DarchetypeVersion=2.3.0-1

Then I opened it in Intellij Idea 10.5, and received some errors from Maven Model Inspector:

• Cannot resolve directory ”${webappDirectory}” (at line 59)
• Cannot resolve directory ‘WEB-INF’ (at line 59)
• Cannot resolve file ‘classes’ (at line 59)

In spite of this the project compile and run normally. What is this?

Part of my pom.xml:

<build>
    <!-- Generate compiled stuff in the folder used for developing mode -->
    <outputDirectory>${webappDirectory}/WEB-INF/classes</outputDirectory>
. . .
</build>

Answer 1

in the beginning of your pom.xml file in the properties section there should be this tag:

<webappDirectory>${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}</webappDirectory>

That’s where the ${webappDirectory} “variable” is defined.
When you place the cursor over the text inside the brackets and press ctrl + q, you will see a small explanation for the variables (Intellj Idea specific)

${project.build.directory} = Model Property project.build.directory: ${project.basedir}/target
${project.build.finalName} = Model Property project.build.finalName: ${project.artifactId}-${project.version}

<outputDirectory>...</outputDirectory> configures where the compiled classes are put (As the comment above your snippet already says).

Have a look into your projectDir/target directory.
But I can’t tell you what this means for development mode.

Btw. i’ve put <!--suppress MavenModelInspection --> above <outputDirectory> to get rid of the red mark in the editor.

Whoops, that seems to be a pretty old question 🙂
Guess you already know!

Regards