Use dependency command line parameters with maven build - maven

Question

I am using findbugs-maven-plugin in the verify phase of the maven life cycle. i.e. it runs on mvn clean install. This is the code I have in my parent pom.xml (in a multi-module project).
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>findbugs-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.0.0</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>findbugs</id>
<phase>verify</phase>
<goals>
<goal>check</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<findbugsXmlOutputDirectory>target/findbugs</findbugsXmlOutputDirectory>
<failOnError>false</failOnError>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>xml-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>verify</phase>
<goals>
<goal>transform</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<transformationSets>
<transformationSet>
<dir>target/findbugs</dir>
<outputDir>target/findbugs</outputDir>
<stylesheet>plain.xsl</stylesheet>
<fileMappers>
<fileMapper implementation="org.codehaus.plexus.components.io.filemappers.FileExtensionMapper">
<targetExtension>.html</targetExtension>
</fileMapper>
</fileMappers>
</transformationSet>
</transformationSets>
</configuration>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.google.code.findbugs</groupId>
<artifactId>findbugs</artifactId>
<version>2.0.0</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>
This is working fine and html files are being generated in each module target. However I want to take this a step further by being able to use parameters allowed by findbugs during the maven build (for example onlyAnalyze). I do not want to add configuration in the pom.xml.
I want the build process to remain the same unless I specify by some command that I want to analyze only one class, for example by running:
mvn clean install -Dfindbugs:onlyAnalyze=MyClass
Do you know of a way I can do this?

Answer 1

This is how you can call a standalone goal:
plugin-prefix:goal or groupId:artifactId:version:goal to ensure the right version.
In your case: findbugs:findbugs
With -Dkey=value you can set plugin parameters if they are exposed. http://mojo.codehaus.org/findbugs-maven-plugin/findbugs-mojo.html doesn't show that option. Just to compare: http://mojo.codehaus.org/findbugs-maven-plugin/help-mojo.html does have such options. Here it is still called Expression with ${key}, nowadays it's generated as User property with just key.
If you want onlyAnalyze to be set from commandline, either ask the mojo-team to fix that, or do the following:
<project>
<properties>
<findbugs.onlyAnalyze>false</findbugs.onlyAnalyze> <!-- default value -->
</properties>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>findbugs-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.0.0</version>
</plugin>
<configuration>
<onlyAnalyze>${findbugs.onlyAnalyze}</onlyAnalyze>
</configuration>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
Now you can call mvn findbugs:findbugs -Dfindbugs.onlyAnalyze=true