Question

In my project I have a parent pom with the following pluginManagement configuration:

<build>
  <pluginManagement>
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugin</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.5.1</version>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.6</source>
          <target>1.6</target>
          <encoding>utf-8</encoding>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
  </pluginManagement>
</build>

Now when I try to activate a plugin in a child-module. I get this error:

'build.plugins.plugin.version' for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-compiler-plugin is missing. @ line 42, column 12

In my child-module I have this plugin configuration:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

How come the module doesn’t find the version attribute specified in its parents pom?

Answer 1

The first thing is cause you are using a wrong groupId. The correct one is org.apache.maven.plugins instead of org.apache.maven.plugin.
Furthermore you have defined an old version of the maven-compiler-plugin (2.5.1 instead of 3.0)