Maven enable profile for specific pugin only

Question

Is it possible to activate a maven profile only when building a specific plugin/goal?

If so how do you go about configuring this in ~/.m2/settings.xml?

Answer 1

You can't. You can (de-)activate plugins through profiles, not the other way around. For all options activating profiles, see:

http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-profiles.html