Maven Report Configuration vs Build Configuration - maven

Question

It is interesting what is the differences between
report->configuration element and build->configuration element in POM.
It is written in POM references:
Subtle difference is that a plugin configuration under the reporting
element works as build plugin configuration, although the opposite is
not true (a build plugin configuration does not affect a reporting
plugin).
See http://maven.apache.org/pom.html#Reporting
Could you give particular example of the differences in behaviour?

Answer 1

This statement means the following:
If we have report generation plugin configuration like
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-project-info-reports-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.8</version>
<configuration>
<linkOnly>true</linkOnly>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
then linkOnly configuration property won't be used when invoking site generation command
mvn site
Instead, we should use the same configuration under reporting element:
<reporting>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-project-info-reports-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.8</version>
<configuration>
<linkOnly>true</linkOnly>
</configuration>
<reportSets>
<reportSet>
<reports>
<report>license</report>
</reports>
</reportSet>
</reportSets>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</reporting>
Here we generate only license report with configuration parameter linkOnly=true.
I.e. build configuration is not used.
Note:
If we explicitly invoke report generation goal "license"
mvn project-info-report:license
then it will use configuration under build element.
I.e. we have opposite behaviour here.