by the way, when I add the project, I checked "For multi modules project, load only root as recursive build", otherwise, continuum checks out all child projects as a flat structure.

Linking to CONTINUUM-1807 - this was an intentional change in Continuum 1.2

... and the discussion thread http://www.nabble.com/Continuum-1.2-build-does-not-build-the-project-when-it-has-change-in-sub-modules-td19770898.html

So, just to be clear: you have a recursive build, so in Continuum you only see the 10 top projects?
Then it's logical that your sub-module will never be built separately.
But the change in CONTINUUM-1807 should not apply for you: you probably want to launch your recursive build.

Wendy, can you check if the change in CONTINUUM-1807 makes an exception for recursive builds?
The change in CONTINUUM-1807 may only affect non-recursive builds.

I don't know if there's an easy way to parse build definitions to detect if they're recursive or not. Maybe just looking for the absence of "--non-recursive" will do.

Yes, I see 10 top projects; all sub modules are showing only on the "working copy" for each project. I have taken out "--non-recursive". The situation we have now is the developer changed code in sub module, nothing get built even for the sub module that was changed.

shouldBuild in MavenTwoBuildExecutor is using incorrect logic to determine if build is recursive.

boolean isRecursive = StringUtils.isNotEmpty( buildDefinition.getArguments() ) && !(
            buildDefinition.getArguments().indexOf( "-N" ) < 0 ||
                buildDefinition.getArguments().indexOf( "--non-recursive" ) < 0 );

Should be:

boolean isRecursive = StringUtils.isNotEmpty( buildDefinition.getArguments() ) && (
            buildDefinition.getArguments().indexOf( "-N" ) < 0 && 
                buildDefinition.getArguments().indexOf( "--non-recursive" ) < 0 );

Thanks for the start! But that will just make it build all the time, because the isRecursive check is to early in the method and if the arguments is empty it will not think it can be recursive.

I have attachad a diff which at least on my side seems to work as expected.

Fix for isRecursive issue. Diff is against continuum-1.2.2.

fix in 1.2.x branch rev 723119
merge in trunk rev 723121
Attached patch not used