Maven plugin in Eclipse – Settings.xml file is missing

The settings file is never created automatically, you must create it yourself, whether you use embedded or “real” maven.

Create it at the following location <your home folder>/.m2/settings.xml
e.g. C:\Users\YourUserName\.m2\settings.xml on Windows or /home/YourUserName/.m2/settings.xml on Linux

Here’s an empty skeleton you can use:

<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0
                      http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">
  <localRepository/>
  <interactiveMode/>
  <usePluginRegistry/>
  <offline/>
  <pluginGroups/>
  <servers/>
  <mirrors/>
  <proxies/>
  <profiles/>
  <activeProfiles/>
</settings>

If you use Eclipse to edit it, it will give you auto-completion when editing it.

And here’s the Maven settings.xml Reference page