I was trying out the new archetype, it was failing to download the trails-archetype because the archetype plugin ignores the remoteRepositories plugin. This is a problem with maven 2.0.4. To remedy the situation... In your instructions for using the mvn archetype, you should mention that if it fails for this reason to run it with -U after mvn to update the archetype plugin itself. mvn -U archetype:create followed by... mvn archetype:create -DarchetypeGroupId=org.trailsframework -DarchetypeArtifactId=trails-archetype -DremoteRepositories=http://snapshots.repository.codehaus.org/ -DarchetypeVersion=1.0-SNAPSHOT -DgroupId=<your package> -DartifactId=<your project> I am unsure if you can do it all in one... mvn -U archetype:create -DarchetypeGroupId=org.trailsframework -DarchetypeArtifactId=trails-archetype -DremoteRepositories=http://snapshots.repository.codehaus.org/ -DarchetypeVersion=1.0-SNAPSHOT -DgroupId=<your package> -DartifactId=<your project>