Suggestions for coping with skipped JavaDoc

[or...@io7m.com]

Hello.

I have a module in most of my projects that generates documentation
written in a custom documentation language, and then packs that
documentation into a standalone archive along with the aggregated
javadocs of the project (deployed along with the rest of the Maven
artifacts to Central, etc). I then unpack that documentation into
the staged site so that the most recent version essentially appears
as part of the site. As a practical example, this is a generated
site:

  http://io7m.github.io/jstructural/

The 'Documentation' link leads to:

  http://io7m.github.io/jstructural/releases.html#Documentation

... and the "one page per section" link leads to the documentation
that was unpacked as part of the build:

  http://io7m.github.io/jstructural/documentation/index-m.xhtml

This is achieved via the following unpleasantness:

  https://github.com/io7m/jstructural/blob/master/io7m-jstructural-documentation/pom.xml

Yes, I'm aware that there are multiple things to hate about this
POM, but I'm attempting to address these one at a time.

The main problem I'm trying to fix now: The module aggregates
javadocs from the other modules. If the build is executed with
-Dmaven.javadoc.skip=true the whole build fails because the
javadoc artifacts haven't been created in the dependencies and
are therefore considered missing by the documentation module.

The only sane solution I can think of is to activate a profile
that enables the javadoc dependencies when javadoc generation
is not being skipped. This would seem to require checking:

  !maven.javadoc.skip || maven.javadoc.skip == false

Unfortunately, profiles can't be activated with multiple property
conditions.

Is there a reasonable way to handle so that the project:

  a) Gives the standard behaviour (all documentation and javadoc
     generated) when mvn is executed with no special arguments.

  b) Produces a build that just does not contain any javadoc
     when -Dmaven.javadoc.skip=true, but still builds correctly
     and otherwise produces documentation.

  c) "just works" with a default Maven install (there's an
     extension out there for activating profiles based on
     an expression language, but it requires users to modify
     their local installation).

M

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