quarkusio/quarkus · error · MojoExecutionException

Failed to parse <pluginXml>

Error message

Failed to parse <pluginXml>

What it means

After confirming the plugin.xml file exists, resolvePluginInfo parses it with DocumentBuilder and extracts groupId/artifactId/version. Any Throwable during XML building/parsing or extraction is wrapped in this MojoExecutionException 'Failed to parse <pluginXml>'. It means the plugin descriptor exists but its content could not be read as a valid plugin.xml document.

Source

Thrown at devtools/maven/src/main/java/io/quarkus/maven/CreateUtils.java:72

    private static Plugin resolvePluginInfo(Path pluginXml) throws MojoExecutionException {
        if (!Files.exists(pluginXml)) {
            throw new MojoExecutionException("Failed to locate " + pluginXml);
        }
        final DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        try {
            final DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
            try (InputStream is = Files.newInputStream(pluginXml)) {
                final Document doc = db.parse(is);
                final Node pluginNode = getElement(doc.getChildNodes(), "plugin");
                final Plugin plugin = new Plugin();
                plugin.setGroupId(getChildElementTextValue(pluginNode, "groupId"));
                plugin.setArtifactId(getChildElementTextValue(pluginNode, "artifactId"));
                plugin.setVersion(getChildElementTextValue(pluginNode, "version"));
                return plugin;
            }
        } catch (Throwable t) {
            throw new MojoExecutionException("Failed to parse " + pluginXml, t);
        }
    }

    private static String getChildElementTextValue(final Node parentNode, String childName) throws MojoExecutionException {
        final Node node = getElement(parentNode.getChildNodes(), childName);
        final String text = getText(node);
        if (text.isEmpty()) {
            throw new MojoExecutionException(
                    "The " + parentNode.getNodeName() + " element description is missing child " + childName);
        }
        return text;
    }

    private static Node getElement(NodeList nodeList, String name) throws MojoExecutionException {
        for (int i = 0; i < nodeList.getLength(); ++i) {
            final Node item = nodeList.item(i);
            if (item.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE
                    && (name.equals(item.getNodeName()) || name.equals(item.getLocalName()))) {

View on GitHub (pinned to e1c734241f)

Solutions

1. Inspect the 'Caused by' (often SAXParseException) to see the exact XML defect
2. Delete the cached quarkus-maven-plugin artifact from ~/.m2 and re-download with -U
3. Validate plugin.xml content manually: `unzip -p <jar> META-INF/maven/plugin.xml | xmllint -`
4. If you built the plugin locally, run a clean full build so the maven-plugin-plugin regenerates the descriptor

Example fix

# truncated/corrupted descriptor
rm -rf ~/.m2/repository/io/quarkus/quarkus-maven-plugin
mvn -U io.quarkus:quarkus-maven-plugin:create

# Validate the descriptor parses before use
unzip -p quarkus-maven-plugin-*.jar META-INF/maven/plugin.xml | xmllint --noout - && echo VALID

try {
    Plugin p = resolvePluginInfo(pluginXml);
} catch (MojoExecutionException e) {
    Throwable cause = e.getCause();
    if (cause instanceof org.xml.sax.SAXParseException spe) {
        logger.error("Malformed plugin.xml at line " + spe.getLineNumber() + ": " + spe.getMessage());
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: META-INF/maven/plugin.xml in the plugin jar is malformed/truncated (corrupted download), unreadable bytes, empty file, or the child-extraction helper throws (missing required elements leading to a thrown error in getChildElementTextValue/getText).

Common situations: Interrupted downloads leaving a truncated jar in ~/.m2; manually edited or regenerated plugin.xml; jar corruption on disk; packaging bugs where plugin.xml contains invalid XML.

Understand the failure class

• Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

Related errors

• Unable to parse pom file: ${pom}
• Failed to locate <pluginXml>
• The <parentNodeName> element description is missing child <c
• Failed to locate element <name>
• Failed to parse POM

AI-assisted analysis of quarkusio/quarkus@e1c734241f (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5e214f553e5bb7e2. Report an issue: GitHub.