Maven Javadoc Plugin During Site Goal: javadoc: error - java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Please increase memory

Question

I have been struggling to increase the memory of my javadoc plugin via my pom file. For some reason my Mac build slave fails during the site goal with an OutOfMemoryError. I tried adjusting the maxmemory of the javadoc plugin via my pluginManagement section of the pom (as per the maven-javadoc-plugin documentation):

...
<build>
  ...
  <pluginManagement>
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.8.1</version>
        <configuration>
          <maxmemory>512m</maxmemory>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  <pluginManagement>
  ...
</build>
...

This didn't seem to help anything, my build still failed with an out of memory error.

So I decided to put this directly in my plugin declaration instead (see the build-plugins-plugin section below:

...
<build>
  ...
  <pluginManagement>
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.8.1</version>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
  <pluginManagement>
  <plugins>
    ...
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
      <configuration>
        <maxmemory>512m</maxmemory>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
    ...
  </plugins>
  ...
</build>
...

...and yet this is still not working, the Mac build slave still fails during the site goal.

Answer 1

It turned out I was being an idiot. The site goal uses the plugin defintions declared in the reporting section of the pom. Therefore I had to add my max memory configuration here instead, see below:

...
<build>
  ...
  <pluginManagement>
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.8.1</version>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  <pluginManagement>
  ...
</build>
...
<reporting>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.8.1</version>
      <configuration>
        <maxmemory>512m</maxmemory>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</reporting>
...

Based on this result, it is my assumption that Maven will not pick up configuration details defined in the build-pluginManagement section of the pom for plugins defined in the reporting section. Cheers.