Currently, the genapp plugin assumes that ${basedir} is to be the top-level of the project being 'gen'ed. The user doesn't realize that the plugin is going to write a bunch of files/directories to the current directory until after running it. It would be nice if we could prompt for a location. I have tested that with simple code modifications to plugin.jelly & plugin.properties plugin.jelly: Step 1 Replace all occurences of ${basedir} with ${projectRoot}. Step 2 Add the following lines at line 92 <!-- Get the project root --> <j:set var="projectRoot" value="${maven.genapp.projectRoot}"/> <j:if test="${empty(projectRoot)}"> <i:ask question="${maven.genapp.prompt.projectRoot}" answer="projectRoot" default="${basedir}/${maven.genapp.template.name}"/> </j:if> plugin.properties: Added the property setting maven.genapp.prompt.projectRoot=Please specify the project root directory: I can provide the modified files – and related changes to properties.xml – if you wish.