Maven - build only selected modules (build dependencies)

In this short article, we would like to show how to build selected modules in a Maven project.

Simple steps:

1. go to the parent project:

   cd C:/project

2. run the following command separating module names with commas:

   mvn -pl module-1,module-2,module-3 -am clean install

   Hint: modules will be built in provided order, it means: module-1, module-2 and as last module-3.

Practical example

In the below example we present how to build a Spring Boot Application that uses a common jar module/project.

cd C:/projects/shop-application

mvn -pl common,shop -am clean install

Where: shop module uses common module as a dependency.

Example output:

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Reactor Build Order:
[INFO]
[INFO] Example projects                                                   [pom]
[INFO] Common                                                             [jar]
[INFO] Shop                                                               [war]
[INFO]
[INFO] --------------------< com.example:com.example:com >---------------------
[INFO] Building Example projects 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT                           [1/3]
[INFO] --------------------------------[ pom ]---------------------------------

...
...
...

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Reactor Summary for Example projects 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT:
[INFO]
[INFO] Example projects ................................... SUCCESS [  0.215 s]
[INFO] Common ............................................. SUCCESS [  3.003 s]
[INFO] Shop ............................................... SUCCESS [ 52.228 s]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time:  55.607 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2021-10-11T12:37:57+02:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where Example projects is the name of the parent project that contains common and shop modules.

Tests skipping

To skip tests add -Dmaven.test.skip=true parameter:

mvn -pl common,shop -am clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true