Set maven goal during import to Eclipse

Question

In my Java project I generate a lot of source files from IDL files by idlj-maven-plugin. It works well - it generates files before compilation when, for example, I run compile goal in Eclipse. However, I wonder if it possible to generate source files when someone imports my project in Eclipse. I mean, I would like to achieve the last step in the following scenario:

• someone clones project
• imports that project using Import the Existing Maven project
• after the above step the source files should be already generated so the user will not be confused by lack of those files (for example for a person who is not very familiar with maven and don't know that s/he needs to run goal maven to generate those files).

In the M2Eclipse description there is a statement that suggest that it is possible to set goals when projects are imported. I was looking for information about how to configure M2Eclipse to do that but with no luck.

Answer 1

I haven't used the idlj-maven-plugin myself, but we tweaked the regular "ignore-eclipse-mapping"-plugin configuration for another custom plugin we developed for our in-house needs:

<pluginManagement>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
     <groupId>org.eclipse.m2e</groupId>
     <artifactId>lifecycle-mapping</artifactId>
     <version>1.0.0</version>
     <configuration>
       <lifecycleMappingMetadata>
         <pluginExecutions>
           <pluginExecution>
             <pluginExecutionFilter>
               <groupId>OUR_PLUGIN_GROUP_ID</groupId>
               <artifactId>OUR_PLUGIN_ARTIFACT_ID</artifactId>
               <versionRange>[2.3,)</versionRange> <!-- Or whatever -->
               <goals>
                 <goal>generate</goal> <!-- Or whatever idlj needs -->
               </goals>
             </pluginExecutionFilter>
             <action>
               <!-- this is what decides if the plugin should run or not -->
               <!-- Most often, you will have an <ignore/> tag instead. -->
               <execute>
                 <runOnIncremental>false</runOnIncremental>
               </execute >
             </action>
           </pluginExecution>
         </pluginExecutions>
       </lifecycleMappingMetadata>
     </configuration>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</pluginManagement>

I think this link has some information about it.