Maven archetype creation : prototype pom - maven

Question

I am creating a maven archetype. In this I have a prototype project, which gets created for a user when the user calls the following command:
mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=xxx -DarchetypeArtifactId=archtype-yyyy -DarchetypeVersion=1.1.0-S5-SNAPSHOT -DgroupId=zzz -DartifactId=proj11
In the prototype pom, I want to use the 'archetypeVersion' property that I am specifying in the above command. Like this:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>mmmm</groupId>
<artifactId>nte</artifactId>
<version>${archetypeVersion}</version>
</dependency>
This is not working for me. When the project is created, it still shows the dependency snippet in the generated pom exactly as it is posted above. It does not replace it.
Is this possible? Does maven allow this?
If yes, how can I do it?

Answer 1

I think simple way to do this is to use maven-replacer-plugin. You have to add next section to archetype /pom.xml:
<build>
...
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>com.google.code.maven-replacer-plugin</groupId>
<artifactId>replacer</artifactId>
<version>1.5.2</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>prepare-package</phase>
<goals><goal>replace</goal></goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<file>target/classes/archetype-resources/pom.xml</file>
<replacements>
<replacement>
<token>\$\{archetypeVersion\}</token>
<value>${version}</value>
</replacement>
</replacements>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
...
<build>
ie this code replace ‘${archetypeVersion}’ substring to current version of archetype. Your ‘/src/main/resources/archetype-resources/pom.xml’ contains next dependency:
<dependency>
<groupId>xxxx</groupId>
<artifactId>yyyy</artifactId>
<version>${archetypeVersion}</version>
</dependency>
After executing ‘mvn install’ command, the resulting file ‘/target/classes/archetype-resources/pom.xml’ will be contain archetype version number. Now you have installed archetype and can use its: ‘mvn archetype:generate ...’.

Answer 2

Easiest way I've found is to just add it as a defaulted variable in your META-INF/maven/archetype-metadata.xml as follows:
<archetype-descriptor
xmlns="https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-archetype-plugin/archetype-descriptor/1.1.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-archetype-plugin/archetype-descriptor/1.1.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/archetype-descriptor-1.1.0.xsd"
name="archetypeVersionExample">
<requiredProperties>
...
<requiredProperty key="archetypeVersion">
<defaultValue>${version}</defaultValue>
</requiredProperty>
</requiredProperties>
...
</archetype-descriptor>
No extra plugins or user entry needed.