Maven in Eclipse: Incremental Builds

Question

I've been looking around for a while and can't find a definite method to build Maven incrementally in Eclipse.

Currently Maven produces a .war file each time I make a change, which takes some time to compile during the the regular build process.

What's the easiest method to speed things up and just copy across the delta changes into a directory instead?

---

My pom.xml file:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.mkyong.common</groupId>
    <artifactId>SpringMVC</artifactId>
    <packaging>war</packaging>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>SpringMVC Maven Webapp</name>
    <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

    <properties>
        <spring.version>3.1.2.RELEASE</spring.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>

        <!-- Spring 3 dependencies -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <!-- JSON -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
            <artifactId>jackson-mapper-asl</artifactId>
            <version>1.9.8</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
            <artifactId>jackson-core-asl</artifactId>
            <version>1.9.8</version>
        </dependency>

        <!-- DHTMLX -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.mylaensys.dhtmlx.adapter</groupId>
            <artifactId>mylaensys-dhtmlx-adapter</artifactId>
            <version>1.1</version>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <finalName>SpringMVC</finalName>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.6</source>
                    <target>1.6</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>

            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.0.2</version>
                <!-- <version>2.1-beta-1</version> -->

                <configuration>
                    <overlay>
                        <excludes>
                            META-INF/**,scripts/menu.js,WEB-INF/*.txt,WEB-INF/jboss-web.xml,WEB-INF/web.xml
                        </excludes>
                    </overlay>

                    <archiveClasses>true</archiveClasses>
                    <warSourceDirectory>
                        src/main/webapp
                    </warSourceDirectory>
                    <warSourceExcludes>
                        WEB-INF/*.tld,WEB-INF/classes/**
                    </warSourceExcludes>
                    <outputDirectory>
                        ${env.WAR_PATH}
                    </outputDirectory>

                    <archive>
                        <manifest>
                            <addClasspath>false</addClasspath>
                            <classpathPrefix>lib/</classpathPrefix>
                        </manifest>
                        <addMavenDescriptor>true</addMavenDescriptor>
                    </archive>

                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

Answer 1

My way using system's maven (not eclipse's internal maven):

1. Right-Click to the project -> Preferences -> Builders
2. New ... -> Program
3. Set C:\Program Files\apache-maven-3.3.9\bin\mvn.cmd (your directory may be different) to Location.
4. Set the folder where you have your pom.xml in to "Working Directory:"
5. Set war:war to Arguments:.
6. Switch to panel "Build Options" and check "During auto builds".

Now, if you ever change a file (and save) the mvn war:war is executed.