Guide to using Modello

Holds for: Not yet checked against Maven 3.9, 3.10 and 4.0
Changed: 12 August 2025
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Modello is a tool for generating resources from a simple model. From a simple model you can generate things like:

Java sources
XML serialization code for the model
XML deserialization code for model
Model documentation
XSD

A typical modello model looks like the following:

To utilize Modello, you would configure the modello-maven-plugin something like the following where you want to generate the Java sources for the model, the xpp3 serialization code and the xpp3 deserialization code (see modello-plugin-xpp3 for more details):

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0">
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.modello</groupId>
        <artifactId>modello-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.8.3</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <goals>
              <!-- Generate the xpp3 reader code -->
              <goal>xpp3-reader</goal>
              <!-- Generate the xpp3 writer code -->
              <goal>xpp3-writer</goal>
              <!-- Generate the Java sources for the model itself -->
              <goal>java</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
        <configuration>
          <models>
            <model>src/main/mdo/archetype-descriptor.mdo</model>
          </models>
          <version>1.0.0</version>
          <useJava5>true</useJava5>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>