sortpom Maven Plugin

Sortpom is a Maven plugin designed to sort pom.xml files by formatting the XML and organizing sections into a predefined order.

Key Benefits:

• Readability: Standardized formatting makes POM files easier to read.
• Comparisons: Makes it much easier to compare different module POMs in a project.
• Consistency: Ensures all modules follow the same structural standards.

To use Sortpom, add the sortpom-maven-plugin to your pom.xml build section. It is recommended to configure it to run automatically during the Maven build lifecycle. By default, the plugin creates a backup file so you can review changes made to your pom.xml.

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>com.github.ekryd.sortpom</groupId>
      <artifactId>sortpom-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>4.0.0</version>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <goals>
            <goal>sort</goal>
          </goals>
        </execution>
      </executions>
    </plugin>
    ...
  </plugins>
</build>

If you want to test the plugin's behavior without modifying your pom.xml file permanently, you can run it directly from the command line using the full plugin coordinates and a predefined sort order.

mvn com.github.ekryd.sortpom:sortpom-maven-plugin:4.0.0:sort -Dsort.predefinedSortOrder=custom_1

The plugin provides two primary goals for managing your pom.xml structure:

1. sort: Always sorts the current pom.xml file by reordering elements and formatting the XML structure.
2. verify: Only sorts the pom.xml if the XML elements are currently unsorted. This goal ignores text formatting (like indentation and line breaks) when determining if the file is already sorted.

mvn sortpom:sort
# or
mvn sortpom:verify