Is effective-pom a merge between super pom and application POM

Question

I have tried to generate effective pom on sample application using mvn help:effective-pom command. http://books.sonatype.com/mvnref-book/reference/pom-relationships-sect-po

Answer 1

Effective POM is composed of Super POM + Application POM(s) + settings.xml contents + plugins bound to the lifecycle by default based on the packaging type chosen (thus, based on one element in the Application POM).

You asked about maven-jar-plugin and maven-compiler-plugin. These are bound to the lifecycle by default because your application POM specifies jar packaging.

You can see the default bindings in $YOUR_REPO_LOCATION\org\apache\maven\maven-core\3.0.x\maven-core-3.0.x.jar\META-INF\plexus\components.xml or in the documentation.

Answer 2

If I remember correctly, effective POM means the actual POM to be used.

Incorporating settings in super POM is part of it. It also includes a lot other things, like applying parent POM, applying profiles, substituting properties, and etc.

I think it will be better if you can give some snippet of the settings you thought that comes from no where, so that we can identify where do they come from.