Javadoc fails on Oracle JDK but doesn't on OpenJDK

Question

I have a simple project with src/main/java/test/Test.java

package test;
/**
 * Class java doc
 */ 
public class Test
{
    /**
     * Wrong java doc
     *
     * @param test
     * @return 
     */
    public int aMethod(int param){
        return 0;
    }
}

and pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.test</groupId>
  <artifactId>test</artifactId>
  <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <build>
      <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.0</version>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.8</source>
          <target>1.8</target>
          <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.0.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>attach-javadocs</id>
            <goals>
              <goal>jar</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

When building on Linux with oracle-jdk8 (161) it fails because of the incorrect javadoc

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-javadoc-plugin:3.0.0:jar (attach-javadocs) on project test: MavenReportException: Error while generating Javadoc: 
[ERROR] Exit code: 1 - /home/D070061/SAPDevelop/test/src/main/java/test/Test.java:10: error: @param name not found
[ERROR]      * @param test

When doing the same with open-jdk8 (v171) the build is successful

I switch the java with sudo update-alternatives --config java

Does anybody know why it doesn't fail on OpenJDK? Is it a bug or is there some special parameters needed?

Answer 1

It appears that Debian patches javadoc to disable doclint by default, as presumably do some derived and other distributions.

The Maven Javadoc plugin added a <doclint> configuration item in 3.0.0, so for that version and later you should be able to re-enable doclint by specifying e.g.:

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>3.1.0</version>
    <configuration>
        <doclint>all</doclint>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>attach-javadocs</id>
            <goals>
                <goal>jar</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>