Look at the mail thread in maven user group: http://www.nabble.com/Not-able-to-pass-multiple-arguments-to-javac-tf4857909s177.html User may have to pass options to the underlying compiler that are not yet supported by the mojo. Current implementation of the maven-compiler-plugin allows user to specify only one option. Neither of the following techniques work: <configuration> <compilerArgument>-proc:none</compilerArgument> <compilerArgument>-implicit</compilerArgument> </configuration> or <configuration> <compilerArgument>-proc:none -impicit</compilerArgument> </configuration> In the first approach, only one of the compilerArgument is considered, in the second approach since maven quotes the argument, it ends up as a single argument to javac and hence becomes an invalid option. The best suggestion is to allow multiple compilerArgument – may be something like: <compilerArguments> <compilerArgument/> <compilerArgument/> </compilerArguments>