Unknown Lifecycle Phase Error in Maven Build

If you are working with the maven build, there is more chance that you would have come across the error something like this:

[ERROR] Unknown lifecycle phase "test1". You must specify a valid lifecycle phase or a goal 
in the format <plugin-prefix>:<goal> or <plugin-group-id>:<plugin-artifact-id>[:<plugin-
version>]:<goal>. 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]

If you look at the above error “Unknown lifecycle phase”, your build could not detect the pre-defined lifecycle phase used by Maven. Maven has the following phases:

• validate – validate the project is correct and all necessary information is available
• compile – compile the source code of the project
• test – test the compiled source code using a suitable unit testing framework. These tests should not require the code be packaged or deployed
• package – take the compiled code and package it in its distributable format, such as a JAR.
• integration-test – process and deploy the package if necessary into an environment where integration tests can be run
• verify – run any checks to verify the package is valid and meets quality criteria
• install – install the package into the local repository, for use as a dependency in other projects locally
• deploy – done in an integration or release environment, copies the final package to the remote repository for sharing with other developers and projects.

You have to specify any one of the above phase to resolve the above error. In most of the situations, this would have occurred due to running the build from the eclipse environment. Look at the below screenshot,

If you look at the above screenshot, you have to provide the lifecycle name in the “Goals” field. I hope this solution helps you to resolve this error.