[MPLUGIN-324] javadoc generated by helpmojo goal of maven-plugin-plugin produces build failures

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 3.5
• Fix Version/s: 3.5.1
• Component/s: Plugin Plugin

Environment

Apache Maven 3.5.0 (ff8f5e7444045639af65f6095c62210b5713f426; 2017-04-03T21:39:06+02:00)
OS name: "windows 7", version: "6.1", arch: "x86", family: "windows"
Java version: 1.8.0_131, vendor: Oracle Corporation

• Assignee: Robert Scholte
• Reporter: Christoph Lembeck
• Created: 23/Aug/17 08:59
• Updated: 15/Sep/17 06:43
• Resolved: 30/Aug/17 17:17

Description

In our project we use the helpmojo goal of the maven-plugin-plugin to generate a HelpMojo class.
Unfortunately the maven-javadoc-plugin fails to process that generated file because the generated javadoc comments contain the illegal symbol '<'.

Here is the error message:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-javadoc-plugin:3.0.0-M1:jar (attach-javadocs) on project codegen-maven-plugin: MavenReportException: Error while generating Javadoc:
[ERROR] Exit code: 1 - D:\eclipse\codegen\codegen-maven-plugin\target\generated-sources\plugin\de\chrlembeck\codegen\HelpMojo.java:354: error: malformed HTML
[ERROR]      * @throws NegativeArraySizeException if <code>indent < 0</code>
[ERROR]                                                           ^

And this is the generated output, that fails:

    /**
     * Splits the specified text into lines of convenient display length.
     *
     * @param text       The text to split into lines, must not be <code>null</code>.
     * @param indent     The base indentation level of each line, must not be negative.
     * @param indentSize The size of each indentation, must not be negative.
     * @param lineLength The length of the line, must not be negative.
     * @return The sequence of display lines, never <code>null</code>.
     * @throws NegativeArraySizeException if <code>indent < 0</code>
     */
    private static List<String> toLines( String text, int indent, int indentSize, int lineLength )