Maven Multi Module EAR - Not adding child modules

Question

I have a Maven multi-module project (Jakarta EE 8) based on the wildfly-jakartaee8-with-tools archetype being deployed on Wildly 26 and using the maven-ear-plugin (3.2.0)

This is the project structure

-WebApp.ear
    -Web-entities.jar
    -Web-ejb.jar
    -Web-web.war
    -Web-mobile.war
    -Web-api.war

Here is the Web-ear pom.xml

<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>

<parent>
    <groupId>com.webapp</groupId>
    <artifactId>WebApp</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
</parent>
<artifactId>Web-ear</artifactId>
<packaging>ear</packaging>
<name>Web - ear</name>
<description>This is the EAR POM file</description>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
        <artifactId>Web-entities</artifactId>
        <type>ejb</type>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
        <artifactId>Web-ejb</artifactId>
        <type>ejb</type>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
        <artifactId>Web-web</artifactId>
        <type>war</type>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
        <artifactId>Web-mobile</artifactId>
        <type>war</type>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
        <artifactId>Web-api</artifactId>
        <type>war</type>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

<build>
    <finalName>${project.parent.artifactId}</finalName>
    <plugins>
        <!--EAR plugin: format of output file -->
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>${version.ear.plugin}</version>
            <configuration>
                <!-- Tell Maven we are using Jakarta EE -->
                <version>8</version>
                <displayName>Web-ear</displayName>
                <generateApplicationXml>true</generateApplicationXml>
                <initializeInOrder>true</initializeInOrder>
                <!-- Use Jakarta EE ear libraries as needed. Jakarta EE ear libraries
                    are in easy way to package any libraries needed in the ear, and automatically
                    have any modules (EJB-JARs and WARs) use them -->
                <defaultLibBundleDir>lib</defaultLibBundleDir>
                <unpackTypes>war</unpackTypes>
                <modules>
                
                    <ejbModule>
                        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
                        <artifactId>Web-entities</artifactId>
                        <bundleFileName>Web-entities.jar</bundleFileName>
                    </ejbModule>
                        
                    <ejbModule>
                        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
                        <artifactId>Web-ejb</artifactId>
                        <bundleFileName>Web-ejb.jar</bundleFileName>
                    </ejbModule>
                    
                    <webModule>
                        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
                        <artifactId>Web-web</artifactId>
                        <contextRoot>/webapp</contextRoot>
                        <bundleFileName>Web-web.war</bundleFileName>
                    </webModule>
                    
                    <webModule>
                        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
                        <artifactId>Web-mobile</artifactId>
                        <contextRoot>/mobile</contextRoot>
                        <bundleFileName>Web-mobile.war</bundleFileName>
                    </webModule>
                    
                    <webModule>
                        <groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
                        <artifactId>Web-api</artifactId>
                        <contextRoot>/api</contextRoot>
                        <bundleFileName>Web-api.war</bundleFileName>
                    </webModule>
                    
                </modules>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <!-- The WildFly plug-in deploys your ear to a local WildFly / JBoss EAP container.
            Due to Maven's lack of intelligence with EARs we need to configure
            the WildFly Maven plug-in to skip deployment for all modules. We then enable
            it specifically in the ear module. -->
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.wildfly.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>wildfly-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <skip>false</skip>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

But when I build the generated application.xml does not include any of the child modules.

If I set generateApplicationXml to false, then manually create the application.xml with the modules specified it still does not add the child modules in the output EAR. but if I set <scope>compile</scope> on the module dependancies in the ear pom it does include them - but this seems wrong to me as all the examples I see uses <scope>provided</scope> ?

I can see that Maven is building each child module correctly and they are present in the /target output folder of the sub-module but its just not adding them to the EAR output, I just get an empty EAR with meta-info

Answer 1

I found that the cause of this was in the project parent pom.xml the child dependancies were labeled with <scope>provided</scope> thus preventing the child modules from being packaged, removing this fixed the issue