More on the Maven POM for PDE headless builds

It turns out that you can override almost any property in the build.properties file using an equivalent plugin configuration item within the buildProperties section.

Moreover, by observing certain conventions the job is made much easier. One of these is that the PDE build takes place within a "build directory" that contains subdirectories named "features" and "plugins", and that the product's project directory (where pom.xml resides) is one of the subdirectories of "plugins". Therefore, in the Maven POM, it would be logical to define buildDirectory as "../..". Here's a possible approach:

  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
        <artifactId>pde-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.0-alpha-2-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <extensions>true</extensions>
        <!-- Custom lifecycle configuration -->
        <configuration>
          <eclipseInstall>${env.M2_HOME}/../eclipse</eclipseInstall>
          <pdeProductFilename>prototyp.product</pdeProductFilename>
          <pdeBuildVersion>3.3.2.R331_v20071019</pdeBuildVersion>
          <buildProperties>
             <base>${maven.work.dir}</base>
             <baseLocation>${maven.work.dir}/eclipse</baseLocation>
             <buildDirectory>${basedir}/../..</buildDirectory>
          </buildProperties>
        </configuration>
        <!-- Also bind to mvn clean -->
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>clean-pde</id>
            <phase>clean</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>clean</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>

Please note: we use a convention that the Maven installation is alongside the Eclipse IDE installation, hence the definition of eclipseInstall above. We also define the maven.work.dir property in the settings.xml file - this is where all the stuff goes that Maven needs, e.g. the local repository and the Eclipse PDE target platform.

Currently I am working on a Maven plugin that will assemble the Eclipse PDE target platform automatically from project dependencies. I'll document this here once it's working.