Multi-module Maven project and jetty:run

Create a profile inside the war module (project-war). Within this profile, configure jetty to attach to a lifecycle phase and execute the run goal explicitly. Now when maven runs from the toplevel project with that profile enabled, it will invoke jetty:run and have sister module dependency resolution (as is normal when executing maven commands from the toplevel project).

The example configuration, when placed in the pom.xml of the web module (project-war), arranges for jetty:run to execute during the test phase. (You may choose another phase, but make sure it's after compile.)

Run from toplevel: mvn test -Pjetty-run or mvn test -DskipTests=true -Pjetty-run. This will compile dependencies as required and make them available but invoke jetty:run within the correct module.

<profiles>
  ...
  <!-- With this profile, jetty will run during the "test" phase -->
  <profile>
    <id>jetty-run</id>
    <build>
      <plugins>
        <plugin>
          <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
          <artifactId>jetty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>7.1.6.v20100715</version>
          <configuration>
            ...
            <webAppSourceDirectory>
              ${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}
            </webAppSourceDirectory>
            ...
          </configuration>
          <executions>
            <execution>
              <id>jetty-run</id>
              <phase>test</phase>
              <goals>
                <goal>run</goal>
              </goals>
            </execution>
          </executions>
        </plugin>
      </plugins>
    </build>
  </profile>
...
</profiles>

There is no magical solution and the only one I know is a bit hacky and rely on the extraClasspath element that you can use to declare extra class directories, relatively. Like this (from JETTY-662):

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
  <artifactId>jetty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>7.0.1.v20091125</version>
  <configuration>
    <scanIntervalSeconds>10</scanIntervalSeconds>
    <webAppConfig>
      <contextPath>/my-context</contextPath>
      <extraClasspath>target/classes;../my-jar-dependency/target/classes</extraClasspath>
    </webAppConfig>
    <scanTargets>
      <scanTarget>../my-jar-dependency/target/classes</scanTarget>
    </scanTargets>
  </configuration>
</plugin>