Inherit build plugin/extension/... in Maven

Question

Say a Maven project has a cool build plugin configured:

<project>
    ...
    <build>
       ... extensions etc.
    </build>
    ...
</project>

I want this configuration to be reusable, so that I can run the goals provided by the plugins/extensions in any new project. The above project might exist just so that other projects can reuse the config.

What is the best way to achieve this?

Answer 1

Use a parent.pom. Deploy this pom to your local repository. Of course you could configure parent.poms for each type of project that you regularly develop in your organisation. Probably a master.pom with general values (location of servers, organisation name, general code style...) is a good idea. The project specific poms would use this as parent.

Answer 2

Declare this pom.xml as of type pom:

<type>pom</type>

and declare it as a parent in every "child" pom.xml that needs the configured plugins: http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the-pom.html#Project_Inheritance