IllegalStateException: The PluginDescriptor for the plugin … was not found

Ever saw this error?

java.lang.IllegalStateException: The PluginDescriptor for the plugin Plugin [org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-resources-plugin] was not found.
        at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultPluginManager.addPlugin(DefaultPluginManager.java:325)
        at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultPluginManager.verifyVersionedPlugin(DefaultPluginManager.java:212)
        at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultPluginManager.verifyPlugin(DefaultPluginManager.java:176)
        at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.verifyPlugin(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:1274)
        at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.getMojoDescriptor(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:1542)
        at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.bindLifecycleForPackaging(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:1033)
        at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.constructLifecycleMappings(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:997)
        at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoal(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:477)
        at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoalAndHandleFailures(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:330)
        at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeTaskSegments(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:291)
        at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.execute(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:142)
        at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:336)
        at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.execute(DefaultMaven.java:129)
        at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.main(MavenCli.java:287)

When you see this, check:

  1. That the JAR file of the plug-in is okay and that it contains a file META-INF/maven/plugin.xml
  2. That the pom.xml of the plug-in exists and is valid.
  3. That all parent POMs exist and are valid.

Good luck. I’ve opened this issue to get a better error message.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 14:56 and is filed under Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to IllegalStateException: The PluginDescriptor for the plugin … was not found

  1. Unknown's avatar Maarten Storm says:
    2. September, 2008 at 22:53

    I had the same problem, just run this command mvn clean package install . I think that the install will not generate the plugin descriptor, package phase does this.

    see for more on http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-plugin-plugin/usage.html

    it worked for me

    Reply
  2. Unknown's avatar lovetamil says:
    10. September, 2008 at 12:05

    Hi it is very nice,

    i’m getting some other plugin(net.sourceforge.cobertura) error, i’m not haveing any plugin.xml in my package, can you send me simple code for implementing cobertura with maven

    Reply
  3. Unknown's avatar Aaron Digulla says:
    11. September, 2008 at 19:11

    As I said: The file “plugin.xml” must be in the JAR file of the maven plugin which your project uses. Run maven with -X to see which JARs it tries to load and then check that the files are not corrupt as I explained above.

    For an example how to use cobertura, see the usage page of cobertura.

    Reply
  4. Saifuddin Merchant's avatar Saifuddin Merchant says:
    4. January, 2018 at 16:58

    Thanks this was helpful in solving a problem I was having. The plugin jar was corrupted and I had to delete it from the repo, so that it was re-downloaded

    Reply

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