Task X: Learning about a Plugin

In order to effectively make use of a plugin you'll need to know a few things about it: its groupID, its artifactId, the version you want to use, what goals it provides and how to configure those goals.

Getting Help about a Plugin

To get general information about a plugin, use the help:describe goal with the -Dplugin argument:

prompt> mvn help:describe -Dplugin=com.agilejava.docbkx:docbkx-maven-plugin
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Name: Docbkx Maven Plugin
Description: A Maven plugin for generating HTML from DocBook.
Group Id: com.agilejava.docbkx
Artifact Id: docbkx-maven-plugin
Version: 2.0.11
Goal Prefix: docbkx

This plugin has 7 goals:
...

To get information on a specific goal, add a -Dgoal argument along with -Ddetail. This will give you parameters that you can configure within pom.xml. To

prompt> mvn help:describe -Dplugin=com.agilejava.docbkx:docbkx-maven-plugin -Dgoal=generate-pdf

$ mvn help:describe -Dplugin=com.agilejava.docbkx:docbkx-maven-plugin -Dgoal=generate-pdf -Ddetail
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
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docbkx:generate-pdf
  Description: A Maven plugin for generating fo output from DocBook
    documents, using version 1.75.2 of the DocBook XSL stylesheets.
  Implementation: com.agilejava.docbkx.maven.DocbkxPdfMojo
  Language: java

  Available parameters:

    admonGraphics
      If true (true), admonitions are presented in an alternate style that uses
      a graphic. (Original XSL attribuut: admon.graphics.)

...