Question

We have many modules in our project and we want to enable test-jar creation for some of those. I tried adding maven jar plugin to the parent pom’s pluginmanagement

<plugins>
  <pluginManagement>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <goals>
            <goal>test-jar</goal>
          </goals>
        </execution>
      </executions>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</pluginManagement>

But, now it is creating test-jar for all the modules.

As per documenation: Plugin Management contains plugin elements in much the same way, except that rather than configuring plugin information for this particular project build, it is intended to configure project builds that inherit from this one. However, this only configures plugins that are actually referenced within the plugins element in the children. The children have every right to override pluginManagement definitions.

It should not create test-jar for the modules we haven’t included in, but somehow it does. None of my modules has maven-jar-plugin added in its build module.

To stop it creating test-jar for all, I can add it only in the module I am interested in.

Is there any other better solution to achieve this?

Answer 1

Normally, what your describing shouldn’t be possible. If I had to guess, I would say that since your packaging type is jar configuration for the maven-jar-plugin gets inserted into your effective pom. Then, since the configuration is there, it also uses the configuration from the plugin management section. Running mvn help:effective-pom might provide some insight into whether or not this is true.

I would also make sure that no parent in your hierarchy contains any concrete configuration for the maven-jar-pom that would be inherited by children. If the child inherits a concrete section, I think that will also trigger it to include the plugin management configuration.