How to fail a project if dependencies are invalid

Question

I'm working on a maven build pipeline. Currently I'm facing the problem that a maven project is still building if a dependency is invalid. I think everyone know that warning in the log:

[WARNING] The POM for is invalid, transitive dependencies (if any) will not be available, enable debug logging for more details.

I would like to fail the project instead of a warning because in a big build pipeline its hard to find.

I looked into the code: The warning happens in maven-core because of an EventType.ARTIFACT_DESCRIPTOR_INVALID.

In the DefaultArtifactDescriptorReader I found that during building the effective model the ModelBuildingException is catched. There is a ArtifactDescriptorPolicy. Based on that a exception will be added or only the EventType.ARTIFACT_DESCRIPTOR_INVALID is fired (see invalidDescriptor()).

          model = modelBuilder.build( modelRequest ).getEffectiveModel();
    }
    catch ( ModelBuildingException e )
            {
                for ( ModelProblem problem : e.getProblems() )
                {
                    if ( problem.getException() instanceof UnresolvableModelException )
                    {
                        result.addException( problem.getException() );
                        throw new ArtifactDescriptorException( result );
                    }
                }
                invalidDescriptor( session, trace, a, e );
                if ( ( getPolicy( session, a, request ) & ArtifactDescriptorPolicy.IGNORE_INVALID ) != 0 )
                {
                    return null;
                }
                result.addException( e );
                throw new ArtifactDescriptorException( result );
            }

I didn't found any option to configure the ArtifactDescriptorPolicy. I expect that the ArtifactDescriptorPolicy.STRICT would solve my problem. Does anyone knows more about that problem?

Answer 1

I think you're a bit ahead of the curve. There is a feature (new switch) in Maven 4 called --fail-on-severity or -fos that does exactly this: fail the build on a specific severity.

$ mvn -fos WARN clean install

If you don't mind being on the bleeding edge, you could install it and give it a go.