What is pluginManagement in Maven's pom.xml?

Question

This is a snippet of my pom file.

...
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.4</version>                        
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <phase>install</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                            ......
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
...

I use it successfully with the command

mvn install

But, when I try to enclose it into the "pluginManagement" tag, the maven-dependency-plugin stops working when I launch the install goal. Why does the "pluginManagement" tag change the build behavior? Or should I use another goal or option?

Answer 1

You still need to add

<plugins>
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
    </plugin>
</plugins>

in your build, because pluginManagement is only a way to share the same plugin configuration across all your project modules.

From Maven documentation:

pluginManagement: is an element that is seen along side plugins. Plugin Management contains plugin elements in much the same way, except that rather than configuring plugin information for this particular project build, it is intended to configure project builds that inherit from this one. However, this only configures plugins that are actually referenced within the plugins element in the children. The children have every right to override pluginManagement definitions.