Maven-plugin-plugin default-descriptor error message after upgrade to 3.1.1

Question

I am upgrading my system's Maven runtime from 3.0.5 to 3.1.1 and trying to build my project using mvn clean install like I normally would. Using the older Maven runtime, the build would always succeed. However, I am now always getting this error message during the build:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-plugin-plugin:3.2:descriptor (default-descriptor) on project XYZ: Execution default-descriptor of goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-plugin-plugin:3.2:descriptor failed: 48188 -> [Help 1]

I thought that perhaps it was due to my dependencies and plugins being outdated, so I ran mvn versions:use-latest-versions to update my pom.xml versions. That still did not fix this issue. Any ideas?

---

UPDATE

By popular demand, here is what my pom.xml file looks like. Note that all dependency and plugin versions were updated by mvn versions:use-latest-versions except for Sitebricks and qdox, due to breaking changes that I didn't want to integrate into my project.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.my.company</groupId>
    <artifactId>my-own-project</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>My Cool Maven Plugin</name>
    <packaging>maven-plugin</packaging>
    <distributionManagement>
    <repository>
            <id>someID</id>
            <url>http://some.url.com</url>
    </repository>
    </distributionManagement>   
    <licenses>
        <license>
            <name>The Apache Software License, Version 2.0</name>
            <url>http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt</url>
            <distribution>repo</distribution>
        </license>
    </licenses>
    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
        <groupId>org.freemarker</groupId>
        <artifactId>freemarker</artifactId>
        <version>2.3.20</version>
    </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-plugin-api</artifactId>
            <version>3.1.1</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
            <artifactId>jackson-core-asl</artifactId>
            <version>1.9.11</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.google.sitebricks</groupId>
            <artifactId>sitebricks</artifactId>
            <version>0.8.5</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.thoughtworks.qdox</groupId>
            <artifactId>qdox</artifactId>
            <version>1.12</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
        <groupId>org.testng</groupId>
        <artifactId>testng</artifactId>
        <version>6.8.7</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <reporting>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>findbugs-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.3.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <effort>Max</effort>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>cobertura-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.4</version>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </reporting>
</project>

Answer 1

Upgrading and using below dependency with config resolved my issue:

<plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-plugin-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.6.0</version>
        <configuration>
               <!-- see http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-5346 -->
               <skipErrorNoDescriptorsFound>true</skipErrorNoDescriptorsFound>
        </configuration>
        <executions>
            <execution>
                <id>mojo-descriptor</id>
                <goals>
                    <goal>descriptor</goal>
                </goals>
            </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>

Answer 2

I had exactly the same problem and tried probably every hint provided in the possible duplicate Basic maven plugin project not working, Mojo plugin descriptors not generating, but nothing worked. Eventually in turned out that an old version 2.6.1 of the library com.ibm.icu:icu4j that was used by some other 3rd party module was responsible. I got rid of the icu4j dependency entirely and maven-plugin-plugin run with out problems thereafter.