There seem to be several ways to structure parent poms in a multiproject build and I wondering if anyone had any thoughts on what the advantages / drawbacks are in each way.
The simplest method of having a parent pom would be putting it in the root of a project i.e.
myproject/
myproject-core/
myproject-api/
myproject-app/
pom.xml
where the pom.xml is both the parent project as well as describes the -core -api and -app modules
The next method is to separate out the parent into its own subdirectory as in
myproject/
mypoject-parent/
pom.xml
myproject-core/
myproject-api/
myproject-app/
Where the parent pom still contains the modules but they’re relative, e.g. ../myproject-core
Finally, there’s the option where the module definition and the parent are separated as in
myproject/
mypoject-parent/
pom.xml
myproject-core/
myproject-api/
myproject-app/
pom.xml
Where the parent pom contains any “shared” configuration (dependencyManagement, properties etc.) and the myproject/pom.xml contains the list of modules.
The intention is to be scalable to a large scale build so should be scalable to a large number of projects and artifacts.
A few bonus questions:
- Where is the best place to define the various shared configuration as in source control, deployment directories, common plugins etc. (I’m assuming the parent but I’ve often been bitten by this and they’ve ended up in each project rather than a common one).
- How do the maven-release plugin, hudson and nexus deal with how you set up your multi-projects (possibly a giant question, it’s more if anyone has been caught out when by how a multi-project build has been set up)?
Edit: Each of the sub projects have their own pom.xml, I’ve left it out to keep it terse.
