How to build maven parent and select number of modules?

How about mvn package -pl api,service,. ('.' indicating the project in the current directory) or mvn package -pl api,service,:parent (where "parent" is the artifactId of the parent module).

Arguments to -pl can either be the relative path to a directory containing a maven module or a coordinate in the form [groupId]:artifactId of a module in the current project. If no groupId is supplied, the groupId of the pom being built is used.

mvn package -pl api,service --also-make

(where --also-make makes the dependencies as well)