This happens when a goal of a plugin couldn't be configured. The most likely cause is that the contents of the <configuration> section for the plugin in your POM does not match the parameter types of the goal in question. E.g. trying to configure a numeric parameter from a string would trigger this error.

So please verify that the configuration for the goal is correct by consulting the plugin documentation. The documentation for many common Maven plugins can be reached via our plugin index.

While quite unlikely, it's also possible that the goal couldn't be configured because of a broken plugin class path. For instance, if the plugin class path is missing some dependencies of the plugin, this can result in linkage errors that prevent the configuration of the goal. To check whether the plugin JAR and its POM are intact, inspect your local repository which is usually located at ${user.home}/.m2/repository. For a plugin with the coordinates com.company:custom-maven-plugin:1.0, the file to check is com/company/custom-maven-plugin/1.0/custom-maven-plugin-1.0.jar and custom-maven-plugin-1.0.pom, respectively. If those files don't match the copies in the plugin repository, e.g. as noticeable by checksum mismatches, simply delete the local files and have Maven re-download it. If you have verified that your local copy of the JAR/POM and the JAR/POM in the plugin repository are bytewise identical but Maven still reports a linkage error, please report this to the maintainer of the plugin.