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The `groupId` and `artifactId` are wrong (this plugin is not from Maven but from codehaus). Additionally, the configuration is not applied to the relevant execution. If you reshuffle the part like so…

    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
      <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>${version-exec-maven-plugin}</version>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <id>a</id>
          <phase>compile</phase>
          <goals><goal>exec</goal></goals>
          <configuration>
            <executable>curl</executable>
          </configuration>
        </execution>
        <execution>
          <id>b</id>
          <goals><goal>exec</goal></goals>
          <configuration>
            <executable>curl</executable>
          </configuration>
        </execution>
      </executions>
    </plugin>

… then it should work if invoked as `mvn exec:exec@a`.

Running just `mvn exec:exec` with no execution ID specified *and* nothing else… probably works in some cases but is not something you should do, as you could accidentally trigger an execution buried in a parent POM somewhere or something.