Difference of Maven JAXB plugins

Question

I have determined that two JAXB plugins for Maven 2 exist, with some different configurations.

The one is from Sun: http://jaxb.dev.java.net/jaxb-maven2-plugin/, the other from Mojohaus: http://mojohaus.org/jaxb2-maven-plugin/

Which of these two plugins can be recommended?

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Thanks Matt. On my little research project, I found that there's quite another plugin comming from the sunners:

<groupId>com.sun.tools.xjc.maven2</groupId>   <artifactId>maven-jaxb-plugin</artifactId>   

and that one:

<groupId>org.jvnet.jaxb2.maven2</groupId> <artifactId>maven-jaxb2-plugin</artifactId> 

and still the one from Codehouse.

Answer 1

Let's summarize. We have/had:

1. the maven-jaxb2-plugin (https://github.com/highsource/maven-jaxb2-plugin)
2. the maven-jaxb-plugin (https://jaxb.dev.java.net/jaxb-maven2-plugin/)
3. the jaxb2-maven-plugin (https://github.com/mojohaus/jaxb2-maven-plugin)

Based on the comments of this thread, I've always used the maven-jaxb2-plugin (i.e. plugin #1):

Concerning the org.jvnet.jaxb2.maven2:maven-jaxb2-plugin versus com.sun.tools.xjc.maven2:maven-jaxb-plugin, from my point of view it's definitely the first one (http://maven-jaxb2-plugin.java.net/).

This plugin has much more features than com.sun.tools.xjc.maven2:maven-jaxb-plugin, the development is active. Finally, I'm one of the authors :) and I'd say we keep in touch with JAXB developers and users and react to the latests features/requests.

And indeed, the plugin #2 is dead. And because I've always been happy with #1, I've never used plugin #3 so can't really say anything about it. Just in case, here is a working configuration for plugin #1:

<project>   ...   <build>     <plugins>       <plugin>         <inherited>true</inherited>         <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>         <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>         <configuration>           <source>1.5</source>           <target>1.5</target>         </configuration>       </plugin>       <plugin>         <groupId>org.jvnet.jaxb2.maven2</groupId>         <artifactId>maven-jaxb2-plugin</artifactId>         <executions>           <execution>             <goals>               <goal>generate</goal>             </goals>           </execution>         </executions>       </plugin>     </plugins>   </build> </project>         

Answer 2

I have recently tried the three plug-ins mentioned above (included here as well):

1. the maven-jaxb2-plugin (http://maven-jaxb2-plugin.java.net/)
2. the maven-jaxb-plugin (https://jaxb.dev.java.net/jaxb-maven2-plugin/)
3. the jaxb2-maven-plugin (http://mojo.codehaus.org/jaxb2-maven-plugin/)

I ended up using a fourth option: The CXF XJC Maven Plugin http://cxf.apache.org/cxf-xjc-plugin.html

If I am missing something I would like to know, but the configuration seemed more straightforward for what I was trying to do and more easily allowed me to to deal with duplicate class generation within the same namespace -- similar to this question: Is there a way to deal with duplicate element definitions across multiple .xsd files in JAXB?.

I now have granular control over each incoming XSD and corresponding java package; here is a sample configuration close to the one I am using.

 <plugin>     <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>     <artifactId>cxf-xjc-plugin</artifactId>     <version>2.3.0</version>     <configuration>         <extensions>             <extension>org.apache.cxf.xjcplugins:cxf-xjc-dv:2.3.0</extension>         </extensions>     </configuration>     <executions>         <execution>             <id>generate-sources</id>             <phase>generate-sources</phase>             <goals>                 <goal>xsdtojava</goal>             </goals>             <configuration>                 <sourceRoot>${basedir}/target/generated-sources/src/main/java</sourceRoot>                 <xsdOptions>                     <xsdOption>                         <xsd>src/main/resources/schema/commands.xsd</xsd> <!--shares a common.xsd file causing the conflicts-->                         <packagename>com.foo.bar.commands</packagename>                     </xsdOption>                     <xsdOption>                         <xsd>src/main/resources/schema/responses.xsd</xsd>                         <packagename>com.foo.bar.responses</packagename>                     </xsdOption>                 </xsdOptions>             </configuration>         </execution>     </executions> </plugin>