java - maven-javadoc-plugin breaks mvn release:perform

Question

I'm trying to execute mvn release:perform on three projects that I have released to our Nexus server many times in the past. Suddenly today, for no apparent reason, all releases are failing to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-javadoc-plugin:2.10:jar (attach-javadocs).

With full stack tracing and debug logging turned on (-e and -X), I see several hundred lines of errors about missing packages:

...    
package org.apache.http does not exist
package org.slf4j does not exist
package org.joda.time does not exist
...

However, all of these packages are in both my local repository and Nexus server. Moreover, I don't get any of these errors from mvn clean install, and all the projects (Java web apps) actually launch from Intellij without issues—so clearly I'm not actually missing hundreds of packages.

What could be preventing mvn release:perform from finding these packages when mvn clean install and mvn release:prepare don't have any problems?

Answer 1

Another way to fix this issue is to add the following property :

...
<properties>
<maven.javadoc.failOnError>false</maven.javadoc.failOnError>
...
</properties>

in your pom.xml