Question

Why this works(and then asks step by step arguments which I can define manually)

C:\Users\userName>mvn archetype:generate

And this doesn’t with arguments already specified? (it is example from
http://maven.apache.org/guides/getting-started/index.html)

C:\Users\userName>mvn archetype:generate \ -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.maven.archetypes \ -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app \ -DartifactId=my-app

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 0.124s
[INFO] Finished at: Sat Aug 20 22:11:56 BST 2011
[INFO] Final Memory: 5M/122M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] The goal you specified requires a project to execute but there is no POM in this directory (C:\Users\userName. Please verify you invoked Maven from the correct directory. -> [Help 1

The first approach also doesn’t find POM, but then it creates everything itself…

Answer 1

Just tried running your command. When I remove the instances of \ it works fine for me.