I am using maven as the backend for a service creation environment. There are types of artifacts that always require the same plugin configurations or dependencies. Therefore we have defined some base artifacts which an artifact can inherit as parent.
Usually we have multi project artifacts where three to six artifacts are an aggregation. Using base aritfacts as parents instead of the aggregation pom has some severe side effects that make life very difficult. E.g. common properties of the aggregation cannot be shared with the child artifacts as the parent is already used for the base artifact. The only solution out of this problem I understood when reading the Internet is the MIXIN feature. You can find in the Internet references from 2008 until 2011. It was promised for Maven 3.0 but then shifted from Maven 3.0 to Maven 3.1. The important questions are, when will Maven 3.1 be release as there is not even a date for a planned release? Do you consider to include the MIXIN feature into Maven 3.0 as an important update? If I am taking the time Maven 3.0 was release and add that to Maven 3.1 it will be years? It would be really of much help to get some statements on this from the Maven core team member. Best regards Richard
