Question

When I execute:

mvn -Dplugin=dependency help:describe

among many goals I get:

...
dependency:get
  Description: Downloads a single artifact transitively from the specified
    remote repositories. Caveat: will always check the central repository
    defined in the super pom. You could use a mirror entry in your settings.xml
...    
dependency:help
  Description: Display help information on maven-dependency-plugin.
    Call
      mvn dependency:help -Ddetail=true -Dgoal=<goal-name>
    to display parameter details.
...

But if I execute “mvn dependency:help” or “mvn dependency:get” I get:

[INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'dependency'.
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Required goal not found: dependency:help in org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin:2.0

Is this normal? This happens not only with dependency plugin but others too.
My Maven version is:

Apache Maven 2.2.1 (r801777; 2009-08-06 21:16:01+0200)
Java version: 1.6.0_30
Java home: c:\xxxx\jdk1.6.0_30\jre
Default locale: de_DE, platform encoding: Cp1252
OS name: "windows xp" version: "5.1" arch: "x86" Family: "windows"

Answer 1

Could this be a problem with the version of dependency:get that is being used in each case? If help:describe is showing you information about Version: 2.4, but dependency:get is looking for the goal in org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin:2.0, then that would match the behavior I’m seeing in one of my local environments.

mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin:2.4:get

might provide additional clues.