How to override configLocation in maven checkstyle plugin?

Question

I want to override the configLocation option in maven checkstyle plugin. Sample part of POM.xml is :

  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <goals>
          <goal>check</goal>
        </goals>
      </execution>
    </executions>
    <configuration>
      <configLocation>blahblah/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml</configLocation>
      <consoleOutput>true</consoleOutput>
    </configuration>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>com.example.blahblah</groupId>
        <artifactId>checkstyle-config</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
      </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <configuration>
      <configLocation>checkstyle.config.xml</configLocation>
      <suppressionsLocation>checkstyle.suppressions.xml</suppressionsLocation>

      ... other configuration ...

    </configuration>
  </plugin>

As it can be seen above, checkstyle-config is a separate maven project which contains the rules for style check and the config file use for rules is blahblah/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml. If I have to override blahblah/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml and use some other .xml which is stored in current project and not checkstyle-config project, then how can I do that?

Answer 1

You can override the plugin configuration in your module by copying the above plugin configuration part and just overriding the config location. In this you can move the configuration tag to within the execution, so that that configuration is applicable to that execution only. See below example

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
  <execution>
    <goals>
      <goal>check</goal>
    </goals>
   <configuration>
      <configLocation>blahblah/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml</configLocation>
   </configuration>
  </execution>
</executions>