title: Exact description of parent inheritance
body: <p>Both the <a href="https://maven.apache.org/pom.html#Inheritance" rel="nofollow noreferrer">official documentation</a> and <a href="https://books.sonatype.com/mvnref-book/reference/pom-relationships-sect-project-relationships.html#ex-inheritance" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Nexus Book</a> have only a superficial description. </p>
  
  <p>There are some details on merging plugin configuration, but that's all. </p>
  
  <p>I just noticed a weird behavior: namely adding a <code>&lt;resources&gt;/&lt;resource&gt;</code> element seems to <em>override</em> parent declarations rather than doing an append or merge.</p>
  
  <p>Can I find a more detailed description of the merge algorithm somewhere on the Web, or is reading the source code the only way to find out?</p>
  
  <p>If it's just code can somebody point where to look, or should I just check what <code>effective-pom</code> mojo calls?</p>