Hani was right. Maven really is a pain in the arse.

I have just managed to install the cobertura plugin. Not by following the instructions mind. On no.

The install instructions are to run the following command:

maven plugin:download
  -Dmaven.repo.remote=http://maven-plugins.sourceforge.net/repository
  -DgroupId=maven-plugins
  -DartifactId=maven-cobertura-plugin
  -Dversion=1.2

Well shucks ain't that nice and easy. And it used to work, because I used that very same command a few months ago and it just worked. Tip for the documentation writer: put this command all on one line and then it's much easier to cut-and-paste into a command window.

But now it doesn't work anymore. Wanna know why? Because it references a load of dependencies inside http://maven-plugins.sourceforge.net/repository/ that do not exist. Did someone delete them? Huh?

In order to install you have to drop the cobertura plugin jar into your repository manually, and then run maven. Then it picks up the dependencies from berlios.

Am I missing something here?

If you're going to release open source stuff, make sure your install just works. No arsing around. People lose interest pretty quickly when you do that sort of thing.