Maven Multi Module benefits over simple dependency

Question

I have some years of experience with maven projects, even with multi modules ones (which has made me hate the multi modules feature of maven (so the disclaimer is now d

Answer 1

Here's a real life case.

I have a multi-module project (and to your rant... I haven't seen any complications with it.) The end result is a webapp but I have different modules for api, impl, and webapp.

12 months after creating the project I find that I have to integrate with Amazon S3 using a stand-alone process run from a jar. I add a new module which depends on api/impl and write my code for the integration in the new module. I use the assembly plugin (or something like it) to create a runnable jar and now I have a war I can deploy in tomcat and a process I can deploy on another server. I have no web classes in my S3 integration process and I have no Amazon dependencies in my webapp but I can share all the stuff in api and impl.

3 months after that we decide to create a REST webapp. We want to do it as a separate app instead of just new URL mappings in the existing webapp. Simple. One more module, another webapp created as the result of the maven build with no special tinkering. Business logic is shared easily between webapp and rest-webapp and I can deploy them as needed.