Playing with maven release plugin

Using maven release plugin can save you a lot of time, especially if you still manually mange your project versioning. But sometimes it can be pain in the “back”. Simple scenario that occurred at least few times in some of my maven projects:

1. Project contains at least two separate modules (A & B)
2. One of this modules (A) is dependant on the other module (B)
3. While trying to prepare a release (release:prepare) you get missing artefact error which points at second module (B) “Brute force” solution is launching clean install process just after getting missing artefact error and after that resume release prepare process (release:prepare). But since maven release plugin main purpose was cutting down unnecessary manual work like this – solution should be little bit subtle. For example you can change a little bit plugin configuration:

org.apache.maven.plugins
    maven-release-plugin
    2.0

        clean install

Lot of other helpful configuration properties exists, be sure to check

http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-release-plugin/prepare-mojo.html