best practices: plugin inheritance for a multi project build

Wim Deblauwe added a comment - 08/Nov/05 1:17 PM This is the mail of Chris: Greetings, I am looking for guidance on POM inheritance. I know that I can set up a build system where all common functionality is pulled into a Parent POM, so that Child POMs can be remarkably small. What I'm uncertain on is how I override some of the plugins – leaving the others as is. I see that I can override properties and customize the common plugin use that way. But can I completely override a particular plugin?? Or perhaps add another plugin?? I guess I'm looking for the rules of inheritance... I.e can I override a plugin like this?? Is there a better way to supply different configuration sets?? Parent POM: <project> .... <build> <plugins> <plugin> .... <artifactId>my-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <something>val1</something> </configuration> </plugin> Child POM <project> .... <parent>....</parent> <build> <plugins> <plugin> .... <artifactId>my-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <something>val2</something> <somethingelse>val3</somethingelse> </configuration> </plugin> Thanks, – Chris And his own follow up mail: I can now answer this myself. It appears that m2 does "the right thing" – i.e. what you'd expect All plugins are inherited from the Parent. To override any Plugin, simply declare it in the Child. Those you don't declare remain unchanged. All <configuration> in the overriding Plugin declaration is inherited. And you can override any config properties or add new ones where necessary. Powerful, good stuff. This, plus the ability to parameterize with <properties>, makes it really easy to create a malleable "build system" good job maven guys Cheers, – Chris