Question

I have installed the m2e plugin for Eclipse and used it to create a simple archetype. I wrote a small test driver and am trying to build the project (via Maven) and compile my Java sources into class files.

I go toRun >> Run Configurations and create a New Maven Build. I name it and set its base directory to be my project root.

When I try to select Goals it doesn’t see any and so I can’t add/specify any. I click the Run button. Here is my console output:

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[ERROR] The build could not read 1 project -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]   
[ERROR]   The project org.me:myproject:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT (C:\Users\me\workbench\eclipse\workspace\MyProject\pom.xml) has 3 errors
[ERROR]     'build.plugins.plugin.artifactId' is missing. @ line 145, column 17
[ERROR]     'build.plugins.plugin.groupId' is missing. @ line 144, column 14
[ERROR]     'build.plugins.plugin.version' for : must be a valid version but is ''. @ line 146, column 14
[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/ProjectBuildingException

The <build> tag in my pom.xml is:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId></groupId>
            <artifactId></artifactId>
            <version></version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>compile</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>compiler:compile</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

A few things:

• What should my artifactId, groupId and version be if this is the (standard) Maven compile phase?
• Is this the correct way to launch a Maven build (through Run Configurations)? In Ant there is a plugin that lets you see all of the targets defined in your build.xml; I see no such analog in Maven/m2e.
• Why does something as simple as compile require plugins? One would think this would be a standard part of any build tool.

Answer 1

You don’t need to put anything as you are using all the defaults settings of the maven compiler. If you really want to specify it you can do it this way:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.3.2</version>
</plugin>