With Maven, things are relative to the directory containing the pom.xml (which is represented by the ${basedir} property and is called the base directory). There are however some situations where you could have to specify a relative path:
- if a
<parent>pom is not directly above a given module using a<relativePath>element (see this example) - if modules are not nested (i.e. if you use a flat layout) using a relative path in the various
<module>elements (like in this example).
Having all that said, I’m not sure to understand what your situation exactly is or what you are describing.
Maybe you should show the relevant parts of your POM if this is possible.