So you are writing a groovy script with some Java in it in GMaven. In between the source tags:
<source>
...some groovy code here
List<Chicken> = new ArrayList<>()
...some more groovy code here
</source>
Problem the < and the > look like XML tag components. Is there a way to escape those and if so, what is it?
Yes, you can escape them with XML/HTML entities
List<Chicken> = new ArrayList<>()
Reference :
List of XML and HTML character entity references