Introduction

No goals specified is a common error when you try to build a project without specifying any maven goals. Indication is that you run maven without specifying any goal or lifecycle phase.

http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/NoGoalSpecifiedException

[INFO] BUILD FAILURE

[ERROR] No goals have been specified for this build. You must specify a valid lifecycle phase or a goal in the format : or :[:]:. Available lifecycle phases are: validate, initialize, generate-sources, process-sources, generate-resources, process-resources, compile, process-classes, generate-test-sources, process-test-sources, generate-test-resources, process-test-resources, test-compile, process-test-classes, test, prepare-package, package, pre-integration-test, integration-test, post-integration-test, verify, install, deploy, pre-clean, clean, post-clean, pre-site, site, post-site, site-deploy. -> [Help 1]

Root cause

First things first, this error could even pop with silly mistake like running ‘mvn’ command without a valid POM.xml project file. Check if the pom.xml has any errors. If you are running Maven from command line, check in the directory path where you are running.

If the pom.xml file is present and doesn’t have any errors. You can look and find out more information about the error if you run Maven in debug mode.

/> mvn -X

/> mvn –debug

Stack trace:

org.apache.maven.lifecycle.NoGoalSpecifiedException: No goals have been specified for this build. You must specify a valid lifecycle phase or a goal in the format : or :[:]:. Available lifecycle phases are: validate, initialize, generate-sources, process-sources, generate-resources, process-resources, compile, process-classes, generate-test-sources, process-test-sources, generate-test-resources, process-test-resources, test-compile, process-test-classes, test, prepare-package, package, pre-integration-test, integration-test, post-integration-test, verify, install, deploy, pre-clean, clean, post-clean, pre-site, site, post-site, site-deploy.
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleStarter.execute(LifecycleStarter.java:94)
at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:309)

Fix the Problem

The steps to take to fix the problem depends on the IDE tool used, environment where the project like standalone, Jenkins CI etc.Make sure pom.xml has no errors.

As the error indicates, you have not specified a valid maven goal or life-cycle phase when running the build. For running tests most common goals are : verify , integration-test or clean verify etc.

You need to look at the documentation of the maven plugin that you are using in the project to know the valid goals to run with maven build tool.