Ensure that exec-maven-plugin is downloaded during the compile phase - maven

Question

We have a maven project where we use several linux bash scripts for various entries to our java application. We have solved this by the exec-maven-plugin so the scripts typically looks like: mvn -e -o -q exec:exec -Dexec.executable="java" -Dexec.args="...". For some reason, we are constrained to use tho offline flag (-o).
My question is: How do I ensure that the exec-maven-plugin is downloaded during the compile phase? There is a risk that a developer doesn't have the exec-maven-plugin downloaded and since the exec-maven-plugin is used with the maven offline flag it won't be downloaded if it is not there.

Answer 1

Thanks to the comments of #eis I managed to sort this out. The pom now looks like this:
<properties>
<additionalJavaArgs></additionalJavaArgs>
</properties>
...
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.2.1</version>
<configuration>
<executable>java</executable>
<commandlineArgs>
-XX:+PrintCommandLineFlags -showversion -classpath %classpath ${additionalJavaArgs}
</commandlineArgs>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
The bash script looks like the following:
ADDITIONAL_JAVA_ARGS=$*
mvn -e -o -q exec:exec -DadditionalJavaArgs="$ADDITIONAL_JAVA_ARGS"
That way the user of the script can add a main class followed by an unlimited number of application arguments.