Basic maven plugin project not working, Mojo plugin descriptors not generating

Maybe this is related to a unresolved issue in Maven: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MNG-5346

For my plugin projects, i could workaround by adding an explicit execution of the maven-plugin-plugin:

<build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-plugin-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.2</version>
                <configuration>
                    <!-- see http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-5346 -->
                    <skipErrorNoDescriptorsFound>true</skipErrorNoDescriptorsFound>
                </configuration>

                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>mojo-descriptor</id>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>descriptor</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

But see the comments in the JIRA issue for more elaborate solutions!