Maven: Failed to read artifact descriptor

Question

You can always try mvn -U clean install

-U forces a check for updated releases and snapshots on remote repositories.

This problem can occur if you have some child projects that refer to a parent pom and you have not installed from the parent pom directory (run mvn install from the parent directory). One of the child projects may depend on a sibling project and when it goes to read the pom of the sibling, it will fail with the error mentioned in the question unless you have installed from the parent pom directory at least once.

I just ran into this problem when moving a project to a new computer. I was in the habit of running commands from the child project and didn't run install on the parent.

Had the same issue with IntelliJ IDEA and following worked.

• Go to File
• Select Settings
• Select Build, Execution, Deployments
• Select Build Tools from drop down
• Select Maven from drop down
• Tick the Always update snapshots check box

If you are using Eclipse, Right Click on your Project -> Maven -> Update Project. It will open Update Maven Project dialog box.

In that dialog box, check Force Update of Snapshots/Releases checkbox & click OK. (Please refer image below)

This worked for me !

If you're using Eclipse:

• Right click on project > Properties > Maven

• Make sure that Resolve dependencies from workspace projects is not clicked.

I know I'm pretty late to the conversation, but I had this problem too. I think the issue was my company's firewall. My solution was to unplug from the network, connect to our open wireless and then force an update via Eclipse. This resolved everything.