Sharing code AND configuration using parent module in Maven

Question

In my project I have two modules (A,B) depend on common module C. I would like A,B share common configuration, such as repository configuration, plugin configuration, etc. In order to achieve this, C is made the parent pom and A,B inherit from it (no aggregation is required, so C does not reference A,B)

However, C by itself contains some java code, along with unit tests. Now, if I run mvn test inside C nothing is executed. Supposedly, pom-packaged modules should not include any code.

Is the above configuration terribly flawed? Should yet another common pom be introduced even though one already exists?

Answer 1

At very typical pattern in Maven projects is to have a module named "parent" which holds your common Maven-specific configuration, profiles, properties, dependency versions, etc. This is The Maven Way (TM).

The structure looks something like the following:

|-- parent
|-- common
|-- module-a
|-- module-b

So, common, module-a and module-b each depend on parent, and module-a and module-b depend on common.

See this excellent resource: http://www.sonatype.com/books/mvnex-book/reference/multimodule-web-spring.html

Note that "parent" can be a sibling of its child modules, in terms of directory structure. There is no requirement that the directory structure hierarchy match that of the modules.