Come to think of it, Maven maps plugin goals to execution phases in a "monoidal" way. Each plugin has a number of goals, and each goal can be mapped to one or m

Come to think of it, Maven maps plugin goals to execution phases in a "monoidal" way. Each plugin has a number of goals, and each goal can be mapped to one or more phases: https://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the-lifecycle.html https://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to... In a way, each plugin is a "mini-lifecycle" in itself. When more than more goal is mapped to a phase, the order of execution corresponds to the order of the plugins in the POM (which means that "plugin aggregation" is associative).