Inherited profiles in Maven

Question

I have the following profiles in my parent pom

<profile>
    <id>P1</id>
    <activation>
        <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
    </activation>
</profile>

<profile>
    <id>P2</id>
    <activation>
        <file>
            <exists>${project.basedir}/src/main/whatever</exists>
        </file>
    </activation>
</profile>

Why P1 is active in child POM and P2 isn't?

The directory ${project.basedir}/src/main/whatever, does not exist in the parent project, but exists in the child one.

Answer 1

Profile P2 is not activated because the path under its exists tag does not resolve to an existing path even though the directory ${project.basedir}/src/main/whatever exists. If you rewrite the property ${project.basedir} as ${basedir}, it should activate the P2 profile.

That should mean that the ${project.basedir} does not resolve to the project base directory as it should. The help:effective-pom shows that it does, though. I have reported this (MNG-5516).

Also I think that P1 will not be active if P2 is.

That is correct. Quoting the documentation for activeByDefault:

This profile (P1 in this example) will automatically be active for all builds unless another profile in the same POM is activated using one of the previously described methods. All profiles that are active by default are automatically deactivated when a profile in the POM is activated on the command line or through its activation config.

The word inherit got me confused, because the "profile inheritance" works in project aggregation but not in project inheritance.

To make things clear, I simulated this situation. Empty pom means that it is empty except for the standard model, group, artifact and version tags.

Simple scenario

Directory structure:

simple
 \-pom.xml

pom content:

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>P1</id>
        <activation>
            <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
        </activation>
    </profile>
    <profile>
        <id>P2</id>
        <activation>
            <file>
                <exists>${basedir}/dir/</exists>
            </file>
        </activation>
    </profile>
</profiles>

If there is no dir directory mvn help:all-profiles outputs:

Profile Id: P1 (Active: true , Source: pom)
Profile Id: P2 (Active: false , Source: pom)

If there is dir directory mvn help:all-profiles outputs:

Profile Id: P2 (Active: true , Source: pom)
Profile Id: P1 (Active: false , Source: pom)

Project inheritance

Directory structure:

inheritance
 |--child
 |  \-pom.xml         // child pom
 \-pom.xml           // parent pom

Child pom is empty while parent pom has the profiles as in the simple scenario. Regardless of the existence of the inheritance/child/dir directory running mvn help:all-profiles from child directory outputs:

Profile Id: P1 (Active: false , Source: pom)
Profile Id: P2 (Active: false , Source: pom)

When running mvn help:effective-pom from child directory it shows that the profiles are indeed not inherited. It behaves as documented:

Elements in the POM that are merged are the following:

• dependencies
• developers and contributors
• plugin lists (including reports)
• plugin executions with matching ids
• plugin configuration
• resources

No profiles are mentioned here.

Project aggregation

Directory structure:

aggregation
 |--module
 |  \-pom.xml         // module pom
 \-pom.xml           // aggregator pom

Module pom is empty while aggregator pom has the profiles as in the simple scenario. If there is no aggregation/module/dir directory running mvn help:all-profiles from module directory outputs:

Profile Id: P1 (Active: true , Source: pom)
Profile Id: P2 (Active: false , Source: pom)

If there is aggregation/module/dir directory running mvn help:all-profiles from module directory outputs:

Profile Id: P2 (Active: true , Source: pom)
Profile Id: P1 (Active: false , Source: pom)

When running mvn help:effective-pom from module directory it shows that the profiles are inherited. This is not explicitly documented:

Project inheritance

If you have several Maven projects, and they all have similar configurations, you can refactor your projects by pulling out those similar configurations and making a parent project. Thus, all you have to do is to let your Maven projects inherit that parent project, and those configurations would then be applied to all of them.

Notes:

• That does not apply to profiles, as it has been shown.
• Runnnig a maven build from inheritance directory will run only parent build.

Project aggregation

And if you have a group of projects that are built or processed together, you can create a parent project and have that parent project declare those projects as its modules. By doing so, you'd only have to build the parent and the rest will follow.

Notes:

• Runnnig a maven build from aggregation directory will run the build of each module and the aggregator (the actual order is determined by maven based on different criteria).

Conclusion

Profiles can be defined globally, per user or per project. Since the aggregated projects are built together (in the same build) some sort of profile resolution must be run to calculate the active ones. So this is the confusing part:

• When projects are inherited profiles are not inherited from parent pom to child pom.
• when projects are aggregated profiles are inherited from aggregator pom to module pom.

This was tested this using Maven 3.1.0. and 3.0.5.