Build multiple Maven projects

Question

I'm very new to Maven, and have a question about building multiple Maven projects.

We have two Maven projects, Project A and Project B.

Project A depends on an artefact generated by Project B.

When changes to project A or B are checked into SVN, our local Hudson server builds the modified project (and any dependent projects) and uploads the artefacts into our local Nexus repository.

Now, consider two developers.

Developer 1 hacks away at project A only, and when Developer 1 builds project A locally, Maven goes and gets the latest project B snapshot artefact from our Nexus server.

Developer 2 hacks on both project A and project B simultaneously. When Developer 2 builds project A locally, we want maven to build project B with any local changes and use the resulting artefact to build project A. How do we set up Maven to build using the local version of project B instead of getting the artefact from Nexus? Is this a standard usage pattern for Maven?

Answer 1

How do we set up Maven to build using the local version of project B instead of getting the artefact from Nexus?

You can setup an updatePolicy for the snapshots artifacts per repository. Actually, Maven checks for SNAPSHOT updates only once a day by default. So if you build a version of B locally, you should be able to use it to build A for some time, even if a new SNAPSHOT is deployed to your Nexus. If this doesn't suit your needs, you can change this policy. You could also build offline (using the -o option).

PS: AFAIK, automatic updates will be disabled by default in Maven 3.x, you will have to explicitly ask for updates (with the -U option).