When does a Maven plugin uses the POM in the current directory? - maven

Question

I use the Versions Maven Plugin to check for updates of my dependencies. Therefore I added the following lines to my pom.xml:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>versions-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${versions-plugin.version}</version>
<configuration>
<rulesUri>classpath:///rules.xml</rulesUri>
</configuration>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>versionrules</groupId>
<artifactId>versionrules</artifactId>
<version>1-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>
But this configuration is not used if I run the Versions Maven Plugin from the commandline in the same directory as the pom.xml. The only way to use my own configuration is to put this plugin configuration in a profil and execute this profil during the Maven run.
Is there a way to run the Versions plugin on the commandline and to configure it via the pom.xml? I am sure my questions does not only apply to the Versions plugin, but to any Maven plugin.

Answer 1

This can be done by using an execution id default-cli in your execution definition the configuration will be used during the execution on command line (using the current configuration) furthermore since Maven 3.3.1 you can use things like:
mvn version:set#second-cli
which means you can do a different configuration for command line in the pom file:
Just by simply separating them by different id
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>versions-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.5.</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>default-cli</id>
<configuration>
...
</configuration>
</execution>
<execution>
<id>second-cli</id>
<configuration>
....
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
So this means you can have different configurations for running on command line by giving the id.