Trouble with -Xlint:all and maven

Question

I'm trying to get maven to output lint level warnings. I've created a small test program that should generate a warning about using a static method from a non-static context, but despite a number of different plugin configuration options, the build always succeeds without any warnings!

After doing some googling, I found suggestions to use the 'compilerArgument(s)' attribute of the compiler plugin, but this doesn't seem to be working for me either.

Here's my sample program that should generate the warning:

package com.dahlgren;

    /**
     * Test space
     *
     */
    public class App {
        public static void main( String[] args ) {
            String foo = "foo";
            // I want this to generate a compilation warning
            System.out.println(foo.format("blah"));
        }
    }

This program should issue a warning, as the javadoc for Java 6 String::format indicates that only static versions of this method exist. I want to catch this case specifically, as it has bitten me in the past and the compiler should detect it :-)

Here is my pom file:

<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.dahlgren</groupId>
  <artifactId>JavaScratchSpace</artifactId>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>

  <name>JavaScratchSpace</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

  <properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
  </properties>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>  
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>  
                <version>3.0</version>
                <configuration>  
                    <source>1.6</source>  
                    <target>1.6</target>  
                    <compilerArgument>-Xlint:all</compilerArgument>
                    <!--
                    <compilerArguments>
                        <Xlint:all />
                    </compilerArguments>
                    -->
                    <showWarnings>true</showWarnings>
                    <showDeprecation>true</showDeprecation>
                </configuration>  
            </plugin>  
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <descriptorRefs>
                        <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                    </descriptorRefs>
                    <archive>
                        <manifest>
                            <mainClass>com.dahlgren.App</mainClass>
                        </manifest>
                    </archive>
                </configuration>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <phase>package</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>single</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

I've tried both forms of the compilerArgument(s) attributes to no avail.

Running mvn clean compile yields the following output:

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]                                                                         
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building JavaScratchSpace 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-clean-plugin:2.3:clean (default-clean) @ JavaScratchSpace ---
[INFO] Deleting file set: /work/fun/JavaScratchSpace/target (included: [**], excluded: [])
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.3:resources (default-resources) @ JavaScratchSpace ---
[INFO] Using 'UTF-8' encoding to copy filtered resources.
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /work/fun/JavaScratchSpace/src/main/resources
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:3.0:compile (default-compile) @ JavaScratchSpace ---
[INFO] Changes detected - recompiling the module!
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /work/fun/JavaScratchSpace/target/classes
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 2.716s
[INFO] Finished at: Tue Mar 12 11:39:21 PDT 2013
[INFO] Final Memory: 8M/150M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional version information:

$ mvn --version && javac -version
Apache Maven 3.0.4
Maven home: /usr/share/maven
Java version: 1.6.0_24, vendor: Sun Microsystems Inc.
Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk-amd64/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "linux", version: "3.2.0-29-generic", arch: "amd64", family: "unix"
javac 1.6.0_24

Answer 1

This "works for me" with your sources.

<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.buck</groupId>
  <artifactId>mavenproject3</artifactId>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>

  <name>mavenproject3</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

  <properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
  </properties>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>3.8.1</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.0</version>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.6</source>
          <target>1.6</target>
          <compilerArgument>-Xlint:all</compilerArgument>
          <showWarnings>true</showWarnings>
          <showDeprecation>true</showDeprecation>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

I imagine that the reason your commented out attempt with

                <compilerArguments>
                    <Xlint:all />
                </compilerArguments>

is failing because of the XML namespace "Xlint" that the "all" tag would fall into, which means that the entire tag "Xlint:all" probably wasn't even seen by the maven configuration parser (being in a different namespace and all).

By the way, the relevant lines of output

Compiling 1 source file to C:\Users\edwbuck\Documents\NetBeansProjects\mavenproject3\target\classes
bootstrap class path not set in conjunction with -source 1.6
com/buck/mavenproject3/App.java:[12,35] static method should be qualified by type name, java.lang.String, instead of by an expression

and my environment

Apache Maven 3.0.4 (r1232337; 2012-01-17 02:44:56-0600)
Maven home: C:\Program Files\NetBeans 7.2.1\java\maven
Java version: 1.7.0_07, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Java home: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_07\jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: Cp1252
OS name: "windows 7", version: "6.1", arch: "x86", family: "windows"

Perhaps you stepped on a platform specific bug?