Maven failed to retrieve plugin descriptor for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-clean-plugin:2.5

Question

As I am rather new to Maven I tried to create a small empty project similar to Maven in 5 Minutes. Though every time I run

mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -DinteractiveMode=false

it I get this error:

[INFO]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 2.546 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2016-03-10T14:33:31+01:00
[INFO] Final Memory: 6M/109M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] No plugin found for prefix 'archetype' in the current project and in the plugin groups [org.apache.maven.plugins, org.codehaus.mojo] available from the repositories [local (/home/rpod/.m2/repository), central (https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2)] -> [Help 1]
org.apache.maven.plugin.prefix.NoPluginFoundForPrefixException: No plugin found for prefix 'archetype' in the current project and in the plugin groups [org.apache.maven.plugins, org.codehaus.mojo] available from the repositories [local (/home/rpod/.m2/repository), central (https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2)]
    at org.apache.maven.plugin.prefix.internal.DefaultPluginPrefixResolver.resolve(DefaultPluginPrefixResolver.java:93)
    at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoDescriptorCreator.findPluginForPrefix(MojoDescriptorCreator.java:266)
    at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoDescriptorCreator.getMojoDescriptor(MojoDescriptorCreator.java:220)
    at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.DefaultLifecycleTaskSegmentCalculator.calculateTaskSegments(DefaultLifecycleTaskSegmentCalculator.java:103)
    at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.DefaultLifecycleTaskSegmentCalculator.calculateTaskSegments(DefaultLifecycleTaskSegmentCalculator.java:83)
    at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleStarter.execute(LifecycleStarter.java:89)
    at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:307)
    at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:193)
    at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.execute(DefaultMaven.java:106)
    at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.execute(MavenCli.java:862)
    at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.doMain(MavenCli.java:286)
    at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.main(MavenCli.java:197)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497)
    at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launchEnhanced(Launcher.java:289)
    at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launch(Launcher.java:229)
    at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.mainWithExitCode(Launcher.java:415)
    at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:356)
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/NoPluginFoundForPrefixException

I looked up several pages though they either state that my firewall is blocking it, which I checked but it is currently inactive, or my proxy settings are wrong, which also can't be since I am not using one.

I also tried to open up those links manually and they work just fine which, I also tried to run it on a different machine and it worked out of the box.

Also my Maven version is (via the mvn --version command):

Java version: 1.8.0_66-internal, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "linux", version: "4.2.0-30-generic", arch: "amd64", family: "unix"

Lastly my current settings.xml setup:

<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0
                           https://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">
    <localRepository>${user.home}/.m2/repository</localRepository>
        <interactiveMode>true</interactiveMode>
        <usePluginRegistry>false</usePluginRegistry>
        <offline>false</offline>
</settings>

Even after looking through the entire log from executing it with the -X parameter I still don't see the issue.

Am I missing something? Thanks in advance for the help.

Answer 1

Try specifying the plugin+version precisely:

mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:2.4:generate -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -DinteractiveMode=false

Also, try to check that the settings.xml you shared is the one being used. The file can live either at:

• The Maven install: $M2_HOME/conf/settings.xml
• A user’s install: ${user.home}/.m2/settings.xml

The user's install would override the global one.