<p>You can control how child POMs inherit configuration from parent POMs by adding {@code combine.children}
            or {@code combine.self} attributes to the children of the configuration element:</p>
            <ul>
            <li>{@code combine.children}: available values are {@code merge} (default) and {@code append},</li>

childList; protected java.util.Map childMap; protected Xpp3Dom parent; private static final Xpp3Dom[] EMPTY_DOM_ARRAY; public static final String CHILDREN_COMBINATION_MODE_ATTRIBUTE = combine.children; public static final String CHILDREN_COMBINATION_MERGE = merge; public static final String CHILDREN_COMBINATION_APPEND = append; public static final String DEFAULT_CHILDREN_COMBINATION_MODE = merge; public static final String SELF_COMBINATION_MODE_ATTRIBUTE = combine.self; public static final String SELF_COMBINATION_OVERRIDE...

                XmlNode dom = server.getDelegate().getConfiguration();
                List<XmlNode> children = dom.getChildren().stream()
                        .filter(c -> !"wagonProvider".equals(c.getName()))
                        .collect(Collectors.toList());
                dom = new XmlNodeImpl(dom.getName(), null, null, children, null);
                PlexusConfiguration config = XmlPlexusConfiguration.toPlexusConfiguration(dom);

    <pluginManagement>
      <plugins>
        <plugin>
          <groupId>org.apache.rat</groupId>
          <artifactId>apache-rat-plugin</artifactId>
          <configuration>
            <excludes combine.children="append">
              <exclude>lifecycle-executor.txt</exclude>
              <exclude>plugin-manager.txt</exclude>
              <exclude>project-builder.txt</exclude>

    <pluginManagement>
      <plugins>
        <plugin>
          <groupId>org.apache.rat</groupId>
          <artifactId>apache-rat-plugin</artifactId>
          <configuration>
            <excludes combine.children="append">
              <exclude>src/assembly/maven/bin/m2.conf</exclude>
              <!-- these are partial scripts, resulting in mvn scripts -->
              <exclude>src/assembly/shared/init</exclude>