In Maven, what does the project.build.directory refer to? I am a bit confused, does it reference the source code directory or the target directory in the Maven project?
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maven
You can find those maven properties in the super pom.
You find the jar here:
${M2_HOME}/lib/maven-model-builder-3.0.3.jar
Open the jar with 7-zip or some other archiver (or use the jar tool).
Navigate to
org/apache/maven/model
There you'll find the pom-4.0.0.xml.
It contains all those "short cuts":
<project>
...
<build>
<directory>${project.basedir}/target</directory>
<outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/classes</outputDirectory>
<finalName>${project.artifactId}-${project.version}</finalName>
<testOutputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/test-classes</testOutputDirectory>
<sourceDirectory>${project.basedir}/src/main/java</sourceDirectory>
<scriptSourceDirectory>src/main/scripts</scriptSourceDirectory>
<testSourceDirectory>${project.basedir}/src/test/java</testSourceDirectory>
<resources>
<resource>
<directory>${project.basedir}/src/main/resources</directory>
</resource>
</resources>
<testResources>
<testResource>
<directory>${project.basedir}/src/test/resources</directory>
</testResource>
</testResources>
...
</build>
...
</project>
After some lobbying I am adding a link to the pom-4.0.0.xml. This allows you to see the properties without opening up the local jar file.
You can find the most up to date answer for the value in your project just execute the
mvn3 help:effective-pom
command and find the <build> ... <directory> tag's value in the result aka in the effective-pom. It will show the value of the Super POM unless you have overwritten.
It points to your top level output directory (which by default is target):
EDIT: As has been pointed out, Codehaus is now sadly defunct. You can find details about these properties from Sonatype here:
If you are ever trying to reference output directories in Maven, you should never use a literal value like target/classes. Instead you should use property references to refer to these directories.
project.build.sourceDirectory project.build.scriptSourceDirectory project.build.testSourceDirectory project.build.outputDirectory project.build.testOutputDirectory project.build.directory
sourceDirectory,scriptSourceDirectory, andtestSourceDirectoryprovide access to the source directories for the project.outputDirectoryandtestOutputDirectoryprovide access to the directories where Maven is going to put bytecode or other build output.directoryrefers to the directory which contains all of these output directories.
Aside from @Verhás István answer (which I like), I was expecting a one-liner for the question:
${project.reporting.outputDirectory} resolves to target/site in your project.
Source: Stackoverflow.com