Andrew, I have answered your questions 4, 5, and 6. I couldn't get all text in one post and had to posted it in 3 separated posts.
Also, I try to get a right plugin block code. So, I created a new Spring MVC project by walking through the STS Spring template setup procedure. I can't run a build of the project. The followings is the messages shown in the console panel:
Code:
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[WARNING]
[WARNING] Some problems were encountered while building the effective model for com.vernonwu:circle:war:1.0.0-BUILD-SNAPSHOT
[WARNING] 'build.plugins.plugin.version' for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-compiler-plugin is missing. @ line 122, column 12
[WARNING] 'build.plugins.plugin.version' for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-war-plugin is missing. @ line 130, column 12
[WARNING]
[WARNING] It is highly recommended to fix these problems because they threaten the stability of your build.
[WARNING]
[WARNING] For this reason, future Maven versions might no longer support building such malformed projects.
[WARNING]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 0.312s
[INFO] Finished at: Fri Jan 27 12:10:49 PST 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 1M/15M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] No goals have been specified for this build. You must specify a valid lifecycle phase or a goal in the format <plugin-prefix>:<goal> or <plugin-group-id>:<plugin-artifact-id>[:<plugin-version>]:<goal>. Available lifecycle phases are: validate, initialize, generate-sources, process-sources, generate-resources, process-resources, compile, process-classes, generate-test-sources, process-test-sources, generate-test-resources, process-test-resources, test-compile, process-test-classes, test, prepare-package, package, pre-integration-test, integration-test, post-integration-test, verify, install, deploy, pre-site, site, post-site, site-deploy, pre-clean, clean, post-clean. -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR]
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/NoGoalSpecifiedException
I, however, can run the maven install (run as->m2 maven install).
I copy the plugin block code over into the old project POM file and run "maven install". That seems to solve my problem. I will need to verify whether the war file is correct or not later.