JaCoCo Maven plugin generate report in XML format

Question

I am using maven-jacoco-plugin for generating the test coverage. Version used is 0.8.7.

When running the mvn test command, it's generating the report in exec format.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.jacoco</groupId>
    <artifactId>jacoco-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${jacoco-maven-plugin.version}</version>
    <configuration>
        <formats>XML</formats>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <!-- Prepares the property pointing to the JaCoCo runtime agent which is passed as VM argument when Maven
            the Surefire plugin is executed. -->
        <execution>
            <id>jacoco-initialize-unit-test</id>
            <goals>
                <goal>prepare-agent</goal>
                <goal>report</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/../target/site/jacoco-aggregate</outputDirectory>
                <!--<destFile>${project.build.directory}/../../target/coverage-reports/jacoco-ut.exec</destFile>-->
                <append>true</append>
                <propertyName>jacoco.agent.argLine</propertyName>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
        <execution>
            <id>jacoco-initialize-integration-test</id>
            <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>prepare-agent</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <destFile>${project.build.directory}/../../target/coverage-reports/jacoco-it.exec</destFile>
                <append>true</append>
                <propertyName>jacoco.agent.argLine</propertyName>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
        <execution>
            <id>jacoco-merge</id>
            <phase>post-integration-test</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>merge</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <fileSets>
                    <fileset>
                        <directory>${project.build.directory}/../../target/coverage-reports/</directory>
                        <includes>
                            <include>*.exec</include>
                        </includes>
                    </fileset>
                </fileSets>
                <destFile>${project.build.directory}/../../target/coverage-reports/jacoco.exec</destFile>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
        <!-- Ensures that the code coverage report for integration tests is created after all tests have been
            run. -->
        <execution>
            <id>jacoco-report</id>
            <phase>verify</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>report-aggregate</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/../target/site/jacoco-aggregate</outputDirectory>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

When I tried adding in configuration tag under using XML, it's giving an error as

Unable to parse configuration of mojo org.jacoco:jacoco-maven-plugin:0.8.8:report-aggregate for parameter formats: Cannot assign configuration entry 'formats' with value 'XML' of type java.lang.String to property of type java.util.List -> [Help 1]

Can anyone please suggest how to move forward on this?

Answer 1

You must add a format node:

<formats>
    <format>XML</format>
</formats>

On GitHub you can find examples. Like this: https://github.com/jacoco/jacoco/blob/master/jacoco-maven-plugin.test/it/it-report-select-formats/pom.xml