Maven is not working in Java 8 when Javadoc tags are incomplete

The best solution would be to fix the javadoc errors. If for some reason that is not possible (ie: auto generated source code) then you can disable this check.

DocLint is a new feature in Java 8, which is summarized as:

Provide a means to detect errors in Javadoc comments early in the development cycle and in a way that is easily linked back to the source code.

This is enabled by default, and will run a whole lot of checks before generating Javadocs. You need to turn this off for Java 8 as specified in this thread. You'll have to add this to your maven configuration:

<profiles>  <profile>    <id>java8-doclint-disabled</id>    <activation>      <jdk>[1.8,)</jdk>    </activation>    <properties>      <javadoc.opts>-Xdoclint:none</javadoc.opts>    </properties>  </profile></profiles><build>  <plugins>    <plugin>        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>        <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>        <version>2.9</version>        <executions>            <execution>                <id>attach-javadocs</id>                <goals>                    <goal>jar</goal>                </goals>                <configuration>                    <additionalparam>${javadoc.opts}</additionalparam>                </configuration>            </execution>        </executions>    </plugin>    <plugin>        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>        <artifactId>maven-site-plugin</artifactId>        <version>3.3</version>        <configuration>          <reportPlugins>            <plugin>              <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>              <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>              <configuration>                <additionalparam>${javadoc.opts}</additionalparam>              </configuration>            </plugin>          </reportPlugins>        </configuration>      </plugin>   </plugins></build>

For maven-javadoc-plugin 3.0.0+:Replace

<additionalparam>-Xdoclint:none</additionalparam>

with

<doclint>none</doclint>

The easiest approach to get things working with both java 8 and java 7 is to use a profile in the build:

<profiles>  <profile>    <id>doclint-java8-disable</id>    <activation>      <jdk>[1.8,)</jdk>    </activation>    <build>      <plugins>        <plugin>          <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>          <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>          <configuration>            <additionalparam>-Xdoclint:none</additionalparam>          </configuration>        </plugin>      </plugins>    </build>  </profile></profiles>

Here is the most concise way I am aware of to ignore doclint warnings regardless of java version used. There is no need to duplicate plugin configuration in multiple profiles with slight modifications.

<profiles>  <profile>    <id>doclint-java8-disable</id>    <activation>      <jdk>[1.8,)</jdk>    </activation>    <properties>      <javadoc.opts>-Xdoclint:none</javadoc.opts>    </properties>  </profile></profiles><build>  <plugins>    <plugin>      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>      <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>      <version>2.9.1</version>      <executions>        <execution>          <id>attach-javadocs</id> <!-- The actual id should be apparent from maven output -->          <configuration>            <additionalparam>${javadoc.opts}</additionalparam>          </configuration>        </execution>      </executions>    </plugin>    ...  </plugins></build>

Tested on oracle/open jdk 6, 7, 8 and 11.