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Maven Plugin: accessing resources accross multiple modules

I'm currently writing a custom maven plugin for generating a XML file in a multi-module maven project.
My maven structure is pretty standard: one parent project and a module by project components in the parent project folder:
-- Parent
-- module A
-- module B
-- module C
I need to list, by module, a set of classes flagged by a custom annotation.
I already wrote a set of custom annotations and an annocation processor to create a XML file at compile time in the corresponding module output directory (${project.build.outputDirectory}) .
Now i need to merge each module XML into one file, but i don't know how to access each modules from within my maven plugin except having each path set as parameters (i don't like this method).
Any idea on how to do this ?
Does maven plugins can traverse project modules ?
Thank you in advance.

To get the list list of all projects you can use:
List<MavenProject> projectList = MavenSession.getProjectDependencyGraph().getSortedProjects()
If one of your goals is correctly executed you will get everything you need. Every MavenProject contains a getBaseDir() etc.

After some researches, it seems that MavenProject.getCollectedProjects() will return the list of projects beeing manipulated by a goal execution in a multi-module project.

ClassLoader For frameworkspring 4.3 with tomcat 8

The problem consist some strategies!
The project this manager dependencies "maven" and "Sonatype Nexus"
There are same artifact, in this case call: core.
That core contains twos class special called SysSpringBoot and SysSpringConfig
This one special class SysSpringConfig, it's need rewrite for last project to use this artifact.
This artifact use for many projects, where each project that use should say which packages scan.
when start this project has one directory it's seems
--webapp
-- pages .xhtml (web pages)
-- WEB_INF
-- web.xml
-- classes
-- SysSpringConfig.class
-- lib
-- my-artifact-core-1.0.0.0.jar
(in my file .jar also contains SysSpringConfig.class (old version))
The classLoader tomcat 8(last version, in old version not has this problem), ready first
../classes/SysSpringConfig.class, then not found all dependencies for use,
at now, find in files *.jar, but in *.jar also find SysSpringConfig.class that time ready another class with the first time!
Same suggest kind implement personality MyClassLoader to solve this problem with Spring classLoader.
sorry with my English

What is the difference between javax.faces-2.1.14.jar from jsf-api-2.2.0-m05.jar and jsf-impl-2.2.0-m05.jar

I am confused between the difference of javax.faces-2.1.14.jar from jsf-api-2.2.0-m05.jar and jsf-impl-2.2.0-m05.jar
I am trying to make a jsf project without using maven and while searching for examples I saw different jar dependencies on different tutorials. The tutorial from coreservlets uses javax.faces-2.1.14.jar and the other tutorial I saw from a different site uses 2 jar files jsf-api-2.2.0-m05.jar and jsf-impl-2.2.0-m05.jar
Id like to know the difference of these two set of dependencies.
Thanks in advance guys.

The jsf-api-xxx.jar contains classes that are under packages java package javax.faces. The classes in this jar are implementation of standard API defined by JSF specification. The jsf-impl-xxx.jar contains classes that are under java package com.sun.faces, which as the java package indicates, is Sun's own class for JSF implementation.
The javax.faces-xxx.jar actually merges the previous two jar files together. In the Maven repository, it is under org.glassfish groupId. You will find both javax.faces and com.sun.faces java package inside.
So what should you use for your development? Actually you can use both. But the recommended way is to include jsf-api-xxx.jar only in the compilation classpath. Thus your own application does not depend on any classes under com.sun.faces package to achieve the portability to other JSF implementations. If you are using an application such as GlassFish, the container should already provide the JSF implementation at runtime. You should not package the above JSF jar files with your war or ear file, as server will provide all of them. If you use a container that does not come with a JSF implementation by default such as Tomcat, you need to package javax.faces-xxx.jar or (jsf-api-xxx.jar + jsf-impl-xxx.jar) in the WEB-INF/lib.

They are different versions.
javax.faces-2.1.14.jar is a combined JAR file for 2.1.14
jsf-api-2.2.0-m05.jar and jsf-impl-2.2.0-m05.jar are separate JARs for 2.2.0-m05.
The differences between the versions can be found in the release notes, but 2.2 and 2.1 are non-trivially different.

aspectj-maven-plugin multi module project

I'm trying to use aspectj-maven-plugin in a multi-module project and can't understand where aspects have to be placed. I want to crosscut in-module and between-modules calls. Where .aj files should be located?

This is what I did so far (structure of maven modules):
foo
foo-api
foo-impl
foo-aspects
.aj files are located in src/main/aspect. All sub-modules (except foo-aspects) are using aspectLibraries option of aspectj-maven-plugin, where they use aspects from foo-aspects.jar.
At the same time every sub-module has its own aspects in src/main/aspect. Works fine for me so far.

How to extend/customize a WAR with another project

We have the following scenario with our project:
A core web application packaged as a
war file (call it Core project).
The need to "customize" or "extend" the core app
per customer (call it Customer project). This mostly includes
new bean definitions (we're using
Spring), ie. replacing service
implementations in the core.war with
customer-specific implementations.
We want to develop the Core and Customer projects independently
When the Customer project is developed, we need to be able to run/debug it in Eclipse (on Tomcat) with the Core project as a dependency
When the Customer project is built, the resulting war file "includes" the core and customer projects. So this .war is the customer-specific version of the application
I'm looking for suggestions as to the best way to do this in terms of tooling and project configuration.
We're using Ant currently, but would like to avoid getting buried in more ant. Has anyone done this with Maven?
I've seen a lot of posts on how to build a web application that depends on a java application, but nothing on a web application depending on another web app.
Thanks!

Sounds like Maven WAR overlay does what you want.

In Eclipse there is a "native" WTP way to do this. It mainly using linked folders and a little hack in .settings/org.eclipse.wst.common.component file. You can read the article about it at http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=759232&seqNum=3 the chapter called "Dividing a Web Module into Multiple Projects". The problem with this is that the linked folder must be relative to some path variable can be defined in Window/Preferences/General/Workspace/Linked Resources tab. Otherwise the linked folder definition (can be found in .project file in project root) will contain workstation specific path. The path variable practicly should be the workspace root. This solution works great with WTP, deploy and everything else works like it should.
The second solution is to use ant for it. Forget it. You will deeply regret it.
The third solution is to use maven for it. You can forget the comfort of WTP publishing if you dont do some tricks. Use war overlays like others suggested. Be sure to install both m2eclipse, m2eclipse extras. There is an extension plugin released recently, that can help you. Described at this blog. I did not try it, but looks ok. Anyway Maven have nothing to do with linked folders, so I think even the first solution and this maven overlay can live together if necessary.
As for headless builds you can use HeadlessEclipse for the first solution. It is dead (by me) now, but still works :). If you use the maven overlay + eclipse stuff, headless builds are covered by maven.

This is little bit more involved but at a high-level we do it as below. We have the core platform ui divided to multiple war modules based on the features (login-ui,catalog-mgmt-ui etc). Each of these core modules are customizable by the customer facing team.
We merge all of these modules during build time into 1 single war module. The merge rules are based on maven's assembly plugin.

You usually start from the Java source code. WARs don't include the Java source code, just the compiled classes under WEB-INF/classes or JARs under WEB-INF/libs.
What I would do is use Maven and start a brand new empty webapp project with it: http://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-webapp.html
After you have the new empty project structure, copy the Java source code to it (src/main/java) and fill out the dependencies list in pom.xml.
Once you've done all this you can use mvn clean package to create a standard WAR file that you can deploy to Tomcat.

You might want to look into designing your core app with pluggable features based on interfaces.
For example say your core app has some concept of a User object and needs to provide support for common user based tasks. Create a UserStore interface;
public interface UserStore
{
public User validateUser(String username, String password) throws InvalidUserException;
public User getUser(String username);
public void addUser(User user);
public void deleteUser(User user);
public void updateUser(User user);
public List<User> listUsers();
}
You can then code your core app (logon logic, registration logic etc) against this interface. You might want to provide a default implementation of this interface in your core app, such as a DatabaseUserStore which would effectively be a DAO.
You then define the UserStore as a Spring bean and inject it where needed;
<bean id="userStore" class="com.mycorp.auth.DatabaseUserStore">
<constructor-arg ref="usersDataSource"/>
</bean>
This allows you to customise or extend the core app depending on specific customer's needs. If a customer wants to integrate the core app with their Active Directory server you write a LDAPUserStore class that implements your UserStore interface using LDAP. Configure it as a Spring bean and package the custom class as a dependant jar.
What you are left with is a core app which everyone uses, and a set of customer specific extensions that you can provide and sell seperately; heck, you can even have the customer write their own extensions.