This is a version of the question posted in Maven: retrieving the main module version from a sub-module, but I can't figure out how to apply the answer. I'm trying this on Maven 3.6.3. I've posted the repository this can be played around with at this GitHub project
I have a top-level project:
<groupId>com.vps</groupId>
<artifactId>main-module</artifactId>
<version>5.0</version>
<packaging>pom</packaging>
There is another multi-module project that needs to be parented by this top-level project, and it has independent versioning from the top-level project.
The projects are not expected to be in the same repository, and are generally released independently of each other.
I want to declare a property that I can further use to refer to the version of this top-level project parent (say to pull in artifacts with the correct version):
<artifactId>auxiliary</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<parent>
<groupId>com.vps</groupId>
<artifactId>main-module</artifactId>
<version>5.0</version>
</parent>
<properties>
<main.version>${project.parent.version}</main.version>
</properties>
<modules><module>corelib</module></modules>
<dependencyManagement>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.vps</groupId>
<artifactId>main-module-1</artifactId>
<version>${main.version}</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>
Now, the sub-module is to pull and use the dependency:
<parent>
<groupId>com.vps</groupId>
<artifactId>auxiliary</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
</parent>
<artifactId>corelib</artifactId>
<properties>
<!-- this doesn't work
<main.version>${project.parent.parent.version}</main.version>
-->
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.vps</groupId>
<artifactId>main-module-1</artifactId>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
If I set main.version
as a reference to ${project.parent.version}
in the auxiliary
POM, compilation of corelib
fails because it tries to pull com.vps:main-module-1:1.0
, which doesn't exist. I guess this is because the properties are resolved based on the effective POM being processed at the moment, and from there, the ${project.parent.version}
is the version of corelib
's parent.
If I override main.version
in the corelib
sub-module as ${project.parent.parent.version}
, I get an error saying that effective version computed for com.vps:main-module-1
is '${project.parent.parent.version}'
, and is invalid. I guess this means that the property cannot be resolved all together, but I can't quite understand why.
So, how do I reasonably (i.e. without hardcoding the top-level in both the parent definition and another property) refer to that top-level version value from descendant submodules?