Most plugins are available via the snapshot repository . To access them, add the following to your pom.xml :
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>Codehaus Snapshots</id>
<url>http://snapshots.repository.codehaus.org/</url>
<snapshots>
<enabled>true</enabled>
</snapshots>
<releases>
<enabled>false</enabled>
</releases>
</repository>
</repositories>
<pluginRepositories>
<pluginRepository>
<id>Codehaus Snapshots</id>
<url>http://snapshots.repository.codehaus.org/</url>
<snapshots>
<enabled>true</enabled>
</snapshots>
<releases>
<enabled>false</enabled>
</releases>
</pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>
or add a profile in your settings.xml :
<profiles>
<profile>
<id>Snapshots</id>
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>Codehaus Snapshots</id>
<url>http://snapshots.repository.codehaus.org/</url>
<snapshots>
<enabled>true</enabled>
</snapshots>
<releases>
<enabled>false</enabled>
</releases>
</repository>
</repositories>
<pluginRepositories>
<pluginRepository>
<id>Codehaus Snapshots</id>
<url>http://snapshots.repository.codehaus.org/</url>
<snapshots>
<enabled>true</enabled>
</snapshots>
<releases>
<enabled>false</enabled>
</releases>
</pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>
</profile>
</profiles>
<activeProfiles>
<activeProfile>Snapshots</activeProfile>
</activeProfiles>
To build a plugin, check out the source . Then add the repositories shown above so that parent versions can be retreived. Cd into the source folder and run "mvn install ".