How do I prompt for user input in Maven?

Question

I'm writing a Maven plugin which I'd like to prompt for a simple user input and decide whether to halt the plugin's execution.

I'd like to do something like this:

$> mvn myplugin:run

[MAVEN] would you like to continue? [default value: y] _

I've tried using maven-antrun-plugin as described here, but in this case Maven gets user input when I build my plugin. Instead, I'd like to retrieve input when user is running my plugin from within some other app that has declared my plugin (confusing?)

Answer 1

Use a Prompter component and have it injected in your plugin (assuming you are using Maven plugin annotations, if not use the equivalent javadoc tags):

@Component
private Prompter prompter;

And to use it:

String name = prompter.prompt("Please enter your name");

Pull in this dependency in your plugin's POM:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.plexus</groupId>
    <artifactId>plexus-interactivity-api</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-alpha-6</version>
</dependency>

The prompter component is used by the release plugin for prompting the user for tags and versions and the archetype plugin as well.