Bug 840634

Had a conversation with Ian, has he unfortunately is no longer with the RHQ team

Ian: so maven has different packaging types - pom, jar, war, ear, etc.
you define a module's packaging type in its pom via <packaging>
there is a way to define custom packaging types (i think via a maven plugin)
so the idea here would be to define an rhq-agent-plugin packaging type
and then certain stuff specific to rhq plugins could be done under the covers
and perhaps some custom config could be done via props or custom elements in 
the pom

me: So instead creating foo-plugin.jar we'd create foo-plugin.rpl ? Or would 
that be sort of transient and the final outcome would still be a jar?

Ian Springer:
final outcome would still be a jar, but the pom would look a little different
hopefully would be less verbose

Ian Springer:
for example, you would not need to use the dependency plugin to copy all 
runtime deps into the plugin jar's lib dir
this could be done automatically be the rhq-plugin packaging impl code
me:
Ah, now I start to understand. That sounds cool and very helpful

Ian: it would cut down the size of plugin poms and improve readability