How to solve "Plugin execution not covered by lifecycle configuration" for Spring Data Maven Builds

In my case of a similar problem, instead of using Andrew's suggestion for the fix, it worked simply after I introduced <pluginManagement> tag to the pom.xml in question. Looks like that error is due to a missing <pluginManagement> tag. So, in order to avoid the exceptions in Eclipse, one needs to simply enclose all the plugin tags inside a <pluginManagement> tag, like so:

<build>
    <pluginManagement>
        <plugins>
            <plugin> ... </plugin>
            <plugin> ... </plugin>
                  ....
        </plugins>
    </pluginManagement>
</build>

Once this structure is in place, the error goes away.

What a mess. I don't remember where I found this but I had to add the following to get M2Eclipse to be happy. Even more sad is that it isn't exactly easy to understand why this tag is needed.

<build>
      ... various plugins ...

      <pluginManagement>
        <plugins>
            <!--This plugin's configuration is used to store Eclipse 
                m2e settings only. It has no influence on the Maven build itself. -->
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.eclipse.m2e</groupId>
                <artifactId>lifecycle-mapping</artifactId>
                <version>1.0.0</version>
                <configuration>
                    <lifecycleMappingMetadata>
                        <pluginExecutions>
                            <pluginExecution>
                                <pluginExecutionFilter>
                                    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                                    <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                                    <versionRange>[1.0,)</versionRange>
                                    <goals>
                                        <goal>test-compile</goal>
                                        <goal>compile</goal>
                                    </goals>
                                </pluginExecutionFilter>
                                <action>
                                    <execute />
                                </action>
                            </pluginExecution>
                        </pluginExecutions>
                    </lifecycleMappingMetadata>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </pluginManagement>
</build>

There were a number of other issues with the M2Eclipse plug-in that simply didn't work with Spring Data. In the end I disabled M2Eclipse in favor of the Apache Eclipse plug-in.

In Eclipse Luna 4.4.0, you can chose to ignore this error in preferences

Window > Preferences > Maven > Errors/Warnings > Plugin execution not covered by lifecycle configuration. Select Ignore / Warning / Error as you wish.

Also, in the quick fix (Ctrl + 1) for this error, it gives an option to mark goal as ignored in Eclipse build in Eclipse preferences (experimental)

This is a cleaner way, as it doesn't modify your pom.xml.

You will need to do a Maven > Update project to fix the same error in any other project as well.

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In STS(Spring-tool-suite), you can choose to ignore this error in preferences

Window > Preferences > Maven > Errors/Warnings > Plugin execution not covered by life-cycle configuration. Select Ignore / Warning / Error as your wish. Then. Right click the project click Maven and update the project then error will gone.