Disable phases in Maven lifecycle

Question

By disable I mean completely, entirely cut the phase from the lifecycle, so that it is not even invoked.

I might need a custom lifecycle but I could not find an easy way to define it straight in my pom.xml. It appears I need to write a plugin just to list phases I want.

For example, I would like default-testResources, default-testCompile and default-test phases to never happen and turn my build log from this:

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building HelpDesk Webapp 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.6:resources (default-resources) @ helpdesk ---
[INFO] Using 'UTF-8' encoding to copy filtered resources.
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory d:\proj\HelpDesk\repo\src\main\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:3.0:compile (default-compile) @ helpdesk ---
[INFO] No sources to compile
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.6:testResources (default-testResources) @ helpdesk ---
[INFO] Not copying test resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:3.0:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ helpdesk ---
[INFO] Not compiling test sources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-surefire-plugin:2.10:test (default-test) @ helpdesk ---
[INFO] Tests are skipped.
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-war-plugin:2.3:war (default-war) @ helpdesk ---
[INFO] Packaging webapp
[INFO] Assembling webapp [helpdesk] in [d:\proj\HelpDesk\repo\target\helpdesk]
[INFO] Processing war project
[INFO] Copying webapp resources [d:\proj\HelpDesk\repo\src\main\webapp]
[INFO] Webapp assembled in [40 msecs]
[INFO] Building war: d:\proj\HelpDesk\repo\target\helpdesk.war
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

into this:

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building HelpDesk Webapp 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.6:resources (default-resources) @ helpdesk ---
[INFO] Using 'UTF-8' encoding to copy filtered resources.
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory d:\proj\HelpDesk\repo\src\main\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:3.0:compile (default-compile) @ helpdesk ---
[INFO] No sources to compile
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-war-plugin:2.3:war (default-war) @ helpdesk ---
[INFO] Packaging webapp
[INFO] Assembling webapp [helpdesk] in [d:\proj\HelpDesk\repo\target\helpdesk]
[INFO] Processing war project
[INFO] Copying webapp resources [d:\proj\HelpDesk\repo\src\main\webapp]
[INFO] Webapp assembled in [40 msecs]
[INFO] Building war: d:\proj\HelpDesk\repo\target\helpdesk.war
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Answer 1

If you want to continue using a predefined packaging (jar, war, etc.) you cannot totally remove them. You may leave the packaging as pom and define your own lifecycle by binding the goals you want to the desired phases, or you may define your own lifecycle entirely. You may also bind a default goal to phase none to prevent the goal from doing any real work as shown.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>default-testResources</id>
            <phase>none</phase>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

All that said - khmarbaise's question is a good one. Generally it's not a best practice to change the existing pre-built lifecycles.