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

I am trying to work with Spring Data and Neo4j. I started by trying to follow this guide linked to by the main site. In particular I based my pom.xml off of the "Hello, World!" example file. Here is a snip from my pom.xml for the plugin that is causing the issues...

<plugin>
<!-- Required to resolve aspectj-enhanced class features -->
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <configuration>
        <outxml>true</outxml>
        <aspectLibraries>
            <aspectLibrary>
                <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-aspects</artifactId>
            </aspectLibrary>
            <aspectLibrary>
                <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-data-neo4j</artifactId>
            </aspectLibrary>
        </aspectLibraries>
        <source>1.6</source>
        <target>1.6</target>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <!-- ERROR HERE IN ECLIPSE SEE BELOW FOR FULL MESSAGE -->
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>compile</goal>
                <goal>test-compile</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.aspectj</groupId>
            <artifactId>aspectjrt</artifactId>
            <version>${aspectj.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.aspectj</groupId>
            <artifactId>aspectjtools</artifactId>
            <version>${aspectj.version}</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</plugin>

The error I am seeing is:

 Multiple annotations found at this line:
    - Plugin execution not covered by lifecycle configuration: org.codehaus.mojo:aspectj-maven-plugin:1.0:compile (execution: default, phase: process-classes)
    - Plugin execution not covered by lifecycle configuration: org.codehaus.mojo:aspectj-maven-plugin:1.0:test-compile (execution: default, phase: process-classes)

I am running Eclipse 3.6.2 and m2e 0.13. I'm not a Maven expert, so please be very explanatory in your answers if possible.

I've also tried m2e 1.0.0 via this update site and still get the same error.

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.

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.