Eclipse with ANTLR4 IDE add-on automatically builds with ANTLR 4.4 - eclipse

Question

I'm trying to work on an ANTLR 4.9.2 project using Eclipse and Maven. I have configured my pom.xml to use the correct version of the runtime and build tools:
<properties>
<maven.compiler.target>18</maven.compiler.target>
<maven.compiler.source>18</maven.compiler.source>
<antlr4.plugin.version>4.9.2</antlr4.plugin.version>
<antlr4.version>4.9.2</antlr4.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<!-- ANTLR 4 parser runtime -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.antlr</groupId>
<artifactId>antlr4-runtime</artifactId>
<version>${antlr4.version}</version>
</dependency>
<!-- ANTLR 4 parser generator tools -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.antlr</groupId>
<artifactId>antlr4-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${antlr4.plugin.version}</version>
</dependency>
<!-- other irrelevant dependencies redacted -->
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<!-- build antlr4 grammars -->
<plugin>
<groupId>org.antlr</groupId>
<artifactId>antlr4-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${antlr4.plugin.version}</version>
<configuration>
<arguments>
<argument>-visitor</argument>
<!-- <argument>-Dlanguage=JavaScript</argument> -->
</arguments>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>antlr4</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
<!-- ensure antlr4 generated source is added to the build path -->
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>build-helper-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.8</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>add-source</id>
<phase>generate-sources</phase>
<goals>
<goal>add-source</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<sources>
<source>${project.build.directory}/generated-sources/antlr4/</source>
</sources>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
I have also installed the ANTLR4IDE eclipse add-on (reported as ANTLR 4 SDK 0.3.6.201611052310 antlr4ide.sdk.feature.group Edgar Espina in the Installation Details screen) in order to provide syntax highlighting when editing .g4 files.
The issue I have is that every time I modify a file, this appears in the console window:
ANTLR Tool v4.4 (C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Temp\antlr-4.4-complete.jar)
KindModule.g4 -o C:\Users\user\git\kindtest3\target\generated-sources\antlr4\org\kindlang\kindtest3\grammar -listener -no-visitor -package org.kindlang.kindtest3.grammar -encoding UTF-8
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 4 second(s)
and running the project tests fails with the error message ANTLR Tool version 4.4 used for code generation does not match the current runtime version 4.9.2
I have tried to disable the setting "Tool is activated" under "Project properties / ANTLR4 / Tool", but this only seems to disable it for the current session. When I restart Eclipse it starts happening again.
(Updated -- in fact, there seems to be a bug in the properties dialog: when I click "apply & close", a message box with the title "Error" is briefly displayed but then disappears before I can read its contents)
How can I permanently prevent this automatic build that is using the wrong version of ANTLR from running?

Answer 1

Unfortunately I can not say something about Eclipse.
I would suggest to use the antlr4-maven-plugin in the correct way like this:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.antlr</groupId>
<artifactId>antlr4-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>antlr4</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<visitor>true</visitor>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
Furthermore the configuration to use build-helper-maven-plugin is simply superflous because the antlr4-maven-plugin correctly adds the information to be compiled. This means remove the whole configuration and definition for build-helper-maven-plugin because it is not needed at all.
Also I would suggest to upgrade to the most recent version of antlr4-maven-plugin / runtime which 4.11.1 at the moment...
I would check the compilation etc. on plain command line.

Answer 2

I have been able to solve the problem by directly editing the com.github.jknack.antlr4ide.Antlr4.prefs file in the .settings directory under my project root and changing the line autobuilding=true to autobuilding=false.