"Plugin not found for prefix app engine" when using maven

Question

I am trying to run the command

mvn appengine:devserver

but it throws the following error

[ERROR] No plugin found for prefix 'appengine' in the current project and in the plugin groups 
 [org.apache.maven.plugins, org.codehaus.mojo] available from the repositories [local 
 (/Users/tylerrice/.m2/repository), central (https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2)] -> [Help 1]

I have never used maven before all this code is from a development company we hired to write the majority of the backend so I am completely lost here. I visited the help page for this error here . I went through the list there and I can't find a pom.xml file either

Answer 1

So I had this same error. When I tried to run mvn appengine:devserver for appengine I was getting this same error

[ERROR] No plugin found for prefix 'appengine' in the current project and in the plugin groups [org.apache.maven.plugins, org.codehaus.mojo] available from the repositories [local (/Users/

I realized that I was up one directory too far, so when I was typing ls and hitting enter I could see my application. I simply needed to type cd [name of application] to go down one directory level to the application itself and it ran fine.