Maven Native plugin fails on POM packaging projects

[stevenschlansker]

I am adding native-image support to an open source project by user request. I would like to run all of my project's tests through the native build pipeline in order to verify that the provided native-image.properties configuration works. I add native-maven-plugin test-native per documentation to the project parent pom.

jar packaging projects work fine, but we have a few pom packaging projects (like a BOM) and these fail with:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.graalvm.buildtools:native-maven-plugin:0.9.24:compile-no-fork (build-native)
   on project jdbi3-bom: Image classpath is empty. Check if your classpath configuration is correct. -> [Help 1]

The project is a POM, there is no classpath, and this is okay. Should the native-maven-plugin skip such projects entirely?

Workaround: add a file-missing activation to the native profile, and then create that file in each project you wish to skip native processing.

[alvarosanchez]

This plugin should only be added to the projects where it should run.

The correct solution is to declare the plugin and its configuration in your parent POM in the pluginManagement section, and then reference the plugin in each of the subprojects where it should run.

[stevenschlansker]

That means that for each of 20 projects that want to use it, I have to declare it separately, just to exclude 2 :(

[alvarosanchez]

In that case, you can configure the plugin in your parent POM as you are doing now, then in those 2 projects override the configuration and set <skipNativeBuild>.