[MNG-6020] Maven fails to detect pom.xml XML syntax error

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 3.2.5
• Fix Version/s: 3.5.0
• Component/s: Core
• Environment: Mac OS X
• External issue URL: https://issues.sonatype.org/browse/OSSRH-22411
• Assignee: Robert Scholte
• Reporter: Archie Cobbs
• Created: 13/May/16 19:39
• Updated: 02/Aug/18 16:26
• Resolved: 12/Apr/17 18:27

Description

I had a typo in my POM: there was an extra trailing </project> tag in the XML. This made the POM not be valid XML.

Maven did not detect this error. While that may seem like a feature, it's really a bug, in particular because Maven will also happily deploy this invalid XML file.

It led to this interesting situation which had us scratching our heads for a while; see https://issues.sonatype.org/browse/OSSRH-22411 for details.

Recommendation: maven should throw an error if pom.xml is not valid XML.

Issue Links

• breaks: MNG-6281 ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException caused by pom.xml with invalid/duplicate XML
• links to: Modello bug report