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Elliotte Rusty Harold commented on MNG-5862: -------------------------------------------- XInclude or external entities enable the sharing of chunks of XML. Properties only allow values. For instance a property can define a version number such as 1.3.2 but not a version element or a complete dependency element. > POM XML parser needs XInclude and/or XML Entity support > ------------------------------------------------------- > > Key: MNG-5862 > URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MNG-5862 > Project: Maven > Issue Type: New Feature > Components: POM > Reporter: Jason Vas Dias > Priority: Major > > POM XML files can get very large and repetitive , and not all modularizaton > scenarios can be resolved by using a Super POM as described in MNG-1980 , > and would be easily resolved if only the POM parser supported XIncludes or > XML Entities - neither are supported. > Here is one such scenario: > I have a large project that has several SureFire plugin based "Test Suites" - > each test suite uses a "common-at-classes" module of common test classes, > and is essentially identical except in its XML configuration "test resource" > files > - so the structure is like this : > {quote} > {noformat} > Top Level project directory: > ./pom.xml > ./acceptance-tests/pom.xml > ./acceptance-tests/common-at-classes/pom.xml > ./acceptance-tests/test-suite_#1/pom.xml > ... > ./acceptance-tests/test-suite_#N/pom.xml > {noformat} > {quote} > There are @ 10 ( being upgraded to @ 20) "test suites", > which all do exactly the same thing, but with slightly > different "test resource" configuration files, > and depend on the 'acceptance-tests/common-at-classes" JAR . > We can modularize all the test-suite dependencies OK in the single > common-at-classes/pom.xml location . > But their is no way to modularize the actual XML code that runs each > test-suite with plugin executions - these plugin execution stanzas can > currently ONLY > be in each test-suite#N directory, even though they are identical. > It would make no sense to have the "Super POM" : acceptance-tests/pom.xml > contain the plugin executions to run any single test suite ; nor can the > common-at-classes/pom.xml contain the plugin execution to run any > test suite, since a test suite run depends on the customized test resource > files that only exist in each "test_suite#N/" sub-project . > So the only solution currently available with Maven is to copy the XML stanzas > that configure and run the test suite ( about 400 lines of XML ) into each of > the 10-20 test-suite/pom.xml files ; this is all because Maven does not > support > XML XInclude or XML Entities; if it did, we could put all this code into one > XML > file provided by the common-at-classes project, and include it in each test > suite . > The test suite XML is then a nightmare to maintain, consistently for all test > suites. > This is becoming such a problem that I am considering making the root project > POM do nothing more than transform the test-suite poms with XML XInclude-s > (using an external XML processor), creating a new copy of the whole project, > and then run an exec plugin goal which runs maven with the transformed POMs. > Please, please can we have some form of XInclude or XML Entity support , or > support for an "<include ...>" element, in the POM parser ! -- This message was sent by Atlassian JIRA (v7.6.3#76005)