In Maven, can a profile override the modules (to not include any)

Question

In maven, once you define your modules in you pom.xml all profiles aggregate the modules defined in them: (relevant part only)

Answer 1

It's not possible. Profile configuration is always merged with main configuration, so you only can add modules in your case.

What you can do instead, however, is to create a some kind of "default" profile (by true in section) that is enabled when no other profiles are invoked and put your default modules' list there. Then, when no profile is specified on Maven build call, this "default" profile is used, but when you call explicitly at least one profile, it's not, so you can this way define modules' list from scratch.