Hi, Let me explain what i think is the typical use case of the creation of a project from an archetype.
1. the user creates a fresh directory 2. the user goes in that directory 3. the user call mvn archetype:create -Dinteractive=true 4. the user is prompted to select the groupId (from a list) of the archetype to use 5. the user is prompted to select the artifactId (from a list) of the archetype to use 6. the user is prompted to select the version (from a list) of the archetype to use 7. the user is prompted for each required properties of the selected archetype those properties are project's groupId, artifactId, version, sources' package, and some other properties defined especially in the selected archetype 8. the project is created based on the answers The steps 4, 5 and 6 need the plugin to guess the lists. List in step 4 is found in ~/.m2/archetype.xml List in step 5 is read from the availabe remote/local repositories from the group metadatas List in step 6 is read from the available remote/local repositories from the artifact metadatas This use case is the usage of the plugin in interactive mode. Regards, Raphaël
