title: maven2 multi module parent pom missing
body: <p>This is my first question on StackOverflow. Learnt quite a bit reading other Q&amp;A so far.</p>
  
  <p>Question is about Maven Multimodule. </p>
  
  <p>Following is my project strurcture:</p>
  
  <pre>
  commons-parent
  |--pom.xml
  |--commons-module1
     |--pom.xml
     |--core
        |--pom.xml
     |--cli
        |--pom.xml
  
  </pre>
  
  <p>cli stands for command line interface.</p>
  
  <p>commons-module1 is a library to be used by different projects within company. 
  commons-module1/core contains the pom which packages only the library classes.
  commons-module1/cli contains the pom which packages the command line test programs.</p>
  
  <p><strong>commons-parent/pom.xml (relevant snippet):</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;groupId&gt;com.abc.def&lt;/groupId&gt;
  &lt;artifactId&gt;commons-parent&lt;/artifactId&gt;
  &lt;packaging&gt;pom&lt;/packaging&gt;
  &lt;version&gt;1.0-SNAPSHOT&lt;/version&gt;
  
  &lt;profile&gt;
      &lt;id&gt;reactor&lt;/id&gt;
      &lt;properties&gt;
          &lt;env.type&gt;dev&lt;/env.type&gt;
      &lt;/properties&gt;
      &lt;modules&gt;
          &lt;module&gt;../commons-module1&lt;/module&gt;
      &lt;/modules&gt;
  &lt;/profile&gt;
  
  there is a distribution management section 
  but there is no repositories section in pom.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>commons-module1/pom.xml (relevant snippet):</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;parent&gt;
      &lt;groupId&gt;com.abc.def&lt;/groupId&gt;
      &lt;artifactId&gt;commons-parent&lt;/artifactId&gt;
      &lt;version&gt;1.0-SNAPSHOT&lt;/version&gt;
  &lt;/parent&gt;   
  
  &lt;groupId&gt;com.abc.def&lt;/groupId&gt;
  &lt;artifactId&gt;commons-module1&lt;/artifactId&gt;
  &lt;packaging&gt;pom&lt;/packaging&gt;
  &lt;version&gt;1.0-SNAPSHOT&lt;/version&gt;
  
  &lt;modules&gt;
      &lt;module&gt;cli&lt;/module&gt;
      &lt;module&gt;core&lt;/module&gt;
  &lt;/modules&gt;
  
  
  there is a distribution management section 
  but there is no repositories section in pom.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>commons-module1/core/pom.xml (relevant snippet):</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;parent&gt;
      &lt;groupId&gt;com.abc.def&lt;/groupId&gt;
      &lt;artifactId&gt;commons-module1&lt;/artifactId&gt;
      &lt;version&gt;1.0-SNAPSHOT&lt;/version&gt;
  &lt;/parent&gt;   
  
  &lt;groupId&gt;com.abc.def&lt;/groupId&gt;
  &lt;artifactId&gt;commons-module1-core&lt;/artifactId&gt;
  &lt;packaging&gt;jar&lt;/packaging&gt;
  &lt;version&gt;1.0-SNAPSHOT&lt;/version&gt;
  
  
  there is a distribution management section 
  but there is no repositories section in pom.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>commons-module1/cli/pom.xml (relevant snippet):</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;parent&gt;
      &lt;groupId&gt;com.abc.def&lt;/groupId&gt;
      &lt;artifactId&gt;commons-module1&lt;/artifactId&gt;
      &lt;version&gt;1.0-SNAPSHOT&lt;/version&gt;
  &lt;/parent&gt;   
  
  &lt;groupId&gt;com.abc.def&lt;/groupId&gt;
  &lt;artifactId&gt;commons-module1-cli&lt;/artifactId&gt;
  &lt;packaging&gt;jar&lt;/packaging&gt;
  &lt;version&gt;1.0-SNAPSHOT&lt;/version&gt;
  
  
  there is a distribution management section 
  but there is no repositories section in pom.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Environment:</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code> Apache Maven 2.1.0 (r755702; 2009-03-18 19:10:27+0000)
   Java version: 1.6.0_25
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Problem Description:</strong></p>
  
  <p>When a project needs to depend on commons-module1-core, project will have a maven 
  dependency in pom as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;dependency&gt;
      &lt;groupId&gt;com.abc.def&lt;/groupId&gt;
      &lt;artifactId&gt;commons-module1-core&lt;/artifactId&gt;
      &lt;version&gt;1.0-SNAPSHOT&lt;/version&gt;
  &lt;/dependency&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This only works (i.e. dependencies satisfied) when the complete hierarchy 
  commons-parent,commons-module1,commons-module1-core all three are in local repository.
  It doesn't work if I have any of them missing in local. We have nexus repository manager 
  set up. So, my expectation was that, the project making use of commons-module1-core library
  can just declare above dependency snippet in their pom and through transitive dependency 
  resolution, get the parent poms.</p>
  
  <p>Am I missing something here?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p>
  
  <p>For a simpler use case which I think is similar to my problem - see this unanswered question:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1681453/child-not-finding-parent-pom-in-flat-structured-multi-module-maven-build">Child not finding parent pom in flat structured multi module maven build</a></p>