Override dependencies in a maven plugin (one plugin, different modules and different dependencies)

Question

I have a java project which has more modules. In some of the modules I use a plugin. In that plugin I nee to override one from its dependencies. So far so good. Solved with adding of the desired dependency in the plugin definition.

<plugin>
   <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
   <artifactId>xdoclet-maven-plugin</artifactId>
   <version>1.0</version>
   <dependencies>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>xdoclet</groupId>
         <artifactId>xjavadoc</artifactId>
         <version>1.5-SNAPSHOT</version>
       </dependency>
   </dependencies>
   ...

But in one of the modules I need to override that dependency with some other version. I tried to solve that with the same way as overriding. If I compile only that submodule alone, the correct dependency version is used, but if I compile whole project it does not work, because it uses the dependency from other modules for the plugin and not the one specified in the modules pom.

Any idea how to solve my problem?

Best regards, Filip

Answer 1

You can create property for your plugin version, e.g xdoclet.version and use it to override parent version.

<properites>
   <xdoclet.version>1.5-SNAPSHOT</xdoclet.version>
</properties>
...
<plugin>enter code here
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>xdoclet-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<dependencies>
  <dependency>
     <groupId>xdoclet</groupId>
     <artifactId>xjavadoc</artifactId>
     <version>${xdoclet.version}</version>
   </dependency>
</dependencies>
...