title: how to externalise the checkstyle config for maven-checkstyle-plugin
body: <p>I'm trying to make the maven-checkstyle-plugin use the same config file for all our projects.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried a couple of ways, but non of them was effective.</p>
  
  <p>The only thing that seems to work is when i place the config file at the root of my maven-project and then use the name as configLocation configuration parameter in the pom.xml</p>
  
  <pre><code>                &lt;plugin&gt;
                  &lt;groupId&gt;org.apache.maven.plugins&lt;/groupId&gt;
                  &lt;artifactId&gt;maven-checkstyle-plugin&lt;/artifactId&gt;
                  &lt;version&gt;2.10&lt;/version&gt;
  
                  &lt;configuration&gt;
                      &lt;configLocation&gt;my-checkstyle-checker.xml&lt;/configLocation&gt;
                  &lt;/configuration&gt;
              &lt;/plugin&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I've tried specifying an absolute disk-path, but that doesn't seem to work. 
  (Considering the endgoal is to have jenkins do the checkstyle this seemed a valid option if the file would be on the jenkins server at the specified location)</p>
  
  <p>I've also tried making a seperate jar-file only containing the xml-file and then using this as a dependency. (This would also centralise the config in 1 location and prevent project specific deviations.) Unfortunately this also doesn't work.</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-checkstyle-plugin:2.10:checkstyle (default-cli) on project jenkins-sandbox-project: An error has occurred in Checkstyle report generation. Failed during checkstyle execution: Unable to find configuration file at location my-checkstyle-checker.xml: Could not find resource 'my-checkstyle-checker.xml'. -> [Help 1]</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Is there anyone that can tell me what i'm doing wrong here?</p>
  
  <p>It seems it only knows about the files in the same location as where the maven command was started.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>maven-checkstyle-plugin version : 2.10</li>
  <li>maven command : mvn checkstyle:checkstyle</li>
  </ul>