Task 3: Getting Help with Maven’s Help Plugin

Task 3: Getting Help with Maven's Help Plugin

To get information about the plugins and arifacts you want to use with Maven, you can use the help:describe goal. This goal has three main forms, triggered by setting different properties. As a reminder, you can set properties using the format -Dproperty=value on the command-line.

To get help with a command, set just the cmd property.
To get help with a specific plugin, set the plugin property. It should use the format groupId:artifactId for plugins beyond the core Maven plugins.
To get help with an artifact, set both the groupId and arfitactId properties.

Additional detail can be requested by setting the detail property to true.

Get information about a Command

prompt> mvn help:describe -Dcmd=install
...
[INFO] 'install' is a phase corresponding to this plugin:
org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-install-plugin:install

It is a part of the lifecycle for the POM packaging 'jar'. This lifecycle includes the following phases:
* validate: Not defined
* initialize: Not defined
...

Get information about a Plugin

prompt> mvn help:describe -Dplugin=archetype
...
Name: Maven Archetype Plugin
Description: Maven Archetype is a set of tools...
Group Id: org.apache.maven.plugins
Artifact Id: maven-archetype-plugin
Version: 2.0
Goal Prefix: archetype

This plugin has 9 goals:
...

Get detailed information about a specific Goal in a Plugin

prompt>  mvn help:describe -Dplugin=archetype -Dgoal=generate -Ddetail=true
...
archetype:generate
  Description: Generates a new project from an archetype.
  Implementation:
  org.apache.maven.archetype.mojos.CreateProjectFromArchetypeMojo
  Language: java
  Before this mojo executes, it will call:
    Phase: 'generate-sources'

  Available parameters:

    archetypeArtifactId
      The archetype's artifactId.
...