Maven project builds fine in IntelliJ, but not with maven command line

Question

When I run:

mvn

I get the following errors:

'build.plugins.plugin.version' for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-compiler-plugin is missing. @ line 171, column 21
'build.plugins.plugin.version' for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-war-plugin is missing. @ line 179, column 21

And in the build failure block I see:

No goals have been specified for this build. You must specify a valid lifecycle phase or a goal in the format <plugin-prefix>:<goal> or <plugin-group-id>:<plugin-artifact-id>[:<plugin-version>]:<goal>. Available lifecycle phases are: validate, initialize, generate-sources, process-sources, generate-resources, process-resources, compile, process-classes, generate-test-sources, process-test-sources, generate-test-resources, process-test-resources, test-compile, process-test-classes, test, prepare-package, package, pre-integration-test, integration-test, post-integration-test, verify, install, deploy, pre-clean, clean, post-clean, pre-site, site, post-site, site-deploy. -> [Help 1]

This is a spring mvc web application, and I just added a Junit tests also (the tests also pass using intellij's test runner)

pom.xml:

<?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>testapp1</groupId>
    <artifactId>testapp1</artifactId>
    <name>testapp1</name>
    <packaging>war</packaging>
    <version>1.0.0-BUILD-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <properties>
        <java-version>1.6</java-version>
        <org.springframework-version>3.0.6.RELEASE</org.springframework-version>
        <org.slf4j-version>1.6.1</org.slf4j-version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <!-- Spring -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework-version}</version>
            <exclusions>
                <!-- Exclude Commons Logging in favor of SLF4j -->
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
                    <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
                 </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework-version}</version>
        </dependency>

         <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-orm</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework-version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework-version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <!-- Logging -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
            <version>${org.slf4j-version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
            <version>${org.slf4j-version}</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
            <version>${org.slf4j-version}</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.16</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>

         <!-- @Inject -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.inject</groupId>
            <artifactId>javax.inject</artifactId>
            <version>1</version>
        </dependency>

        <!-- Servlet -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
            <version>2.5</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet.jsp</groupId>
            <artifactId>jsp-api</artifactId>
            <version>2.1</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
            <version>1.2</version>
        </dependency>

        <!-- hibernate -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
            <version>3.5.1-Final</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-annotations</artifactId>
            <version>3.5.1-Final</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-entitymanager</artifactId>
            <version>3.5.1-Final</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-ehcache</artifactId>
            <version>3.3.1.GA</version>
        </dependency>

         <dependency>
            <groupId>commons-dbcp</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-dbcp</artifactId>
            <version>1.4</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>mysql</groupId>
            <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
            <version>5.1.13</version>
        </dependency>



        <!-- Test -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>4.7</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>org.springframework.maven.release</id>
            <name>Spring Maven Release Repository</name>
            <url>http://maven.springframework.org/release</url>
            <releases><enabled>true</enabled></releases>
            <snapshots><enabled>false</enabled></snapshots>
        </repository>
        <!-- For testing against latest Spring snapshots -->
        <repository>
            <id>org.springframework.maven.snapshot</id>
            <name>Spring Maven Snapshot Repository</name>
            <url>http://maven.springframework.org/snapshot</url>
            <releases><enabled>false</enabled></releases>
            <snapshots><enabled>true</enabled></snapshots>
        </repository>
        <!-- For developing against latest Spring milestones -->
        <repository>
            <id>org.springframework.maven.milestone</id>
            <name>Spring Maven Milestone Repository</name>
            <url>http://maven.springframework.org/milestone</url>
            <snapshots><enabled>false</enabled></snapshots>
        </repository>
    </repositories>

     <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <source>${java-version}</source>
                    <target>${java-version}</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <warName>testapp1</warName>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>tomcat-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>1.1</version>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

Also, my unit test was failing as IntelliJ wasn't resolving the statement:

int a = 1;
int b = 1;
assertTrue(a == b);   // *** assertTrue was not resolving

I did get it to work using:

org.junit.Assert.assertTrue(a == b);

Very strange why IntelliJ doesn't tell me what to import here, I couldn't get it working even trying to add: import org.junit.Assert;

Answer 1

To get rid of the annoying version warnings, add them first:-

<plugins>
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3.2</version>
        ...
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.1.1</version>
        ...
    </plugin>
    ...
</plugins>

The reason assertTrue() doesn't resolve right away is because you need to configure Intellij to automatically resolve the "import static" on Assert first. This is a one time thing. To configure this in Intellij, see my posted solution at Add favorite methods to static import in IntelliJ? . Once this is configured, it will resolve nicely after you type any assert statement. You can add other useful import static here, for example, if you are using Hamcrest , etc.

As others have mentioned, when you running mvn command through command line, you need to specify a goal after mvn . If you click on "Maven Projects" on the right navigation in Intellij, then expand the drop down, you will see all the listed goals that you can use (clean, validate, compile, test, etc...) that you normally invoke through Intellij. Here's a detailed explanation of them .

If I were you, I would just run maven goals directly from Intellij instead of through command line, but it's really a preference thing... either way works.

Answer 2

you don`t need to run mvn

you need to run something like mvn compile or mvn package

also it looks like you a missing the version for your compiler plugin and for the war plugin. can you post your pom.xml to show you where to fix this?

Answer 3

You have to invoke maven with a target eg

mvn clean
mvn package
mvn install

You can ignore the missing version warning at the moment. However you should add the versions to your pom.xml.

When you hit test in Spring with junit its calling:

mvn test

That is a valid target as well.