Sonatype CLM for Maven allows users to evaluate any Maven-based software projects, in the same way our integrated tools (e.g. Nexus Pro, Eclipse, Hudson/Jenkins) do.

This means you can access the same robust, reporting features no matter what toolset you use. It can be run on a command line interface and can therefore be executed on any continuous integration server, as well as a number of popular IDEs.

How you use the Sonatype CLM for Maven plugin widely depends on how you enforce policy. However, in general, when using the plugin on a multi-module project in most cases you will only configure an execution for the modules that produce components that will be deployed as an application.

Typically these are ear files or war files for deployment on application servers or tar.gz or other archives that are used for production deployments or distribution to users. That said, you can also analyze all modules of a project. Again, this will largely depend on what your CLM policy is enforcing and what you want to validate.

In the following sections, we’ll provide details on these goals and their usage: