jacoco-coverage-policy

To prevent code coverage regressions in Maven, configure the jacoco-maven-plugin with check rules that enforce minimum line and branch coverage floors, causing the build to fail when thresholds are not met.

A JaCoCo coverage policy establishes minimum and target line and branch coverage thresholds to maintain code quality. It is needed when you want to prevent coverage regressions across your entire codebase or on newly added code.

Yes, you can configure separate coverage validation rules. The policy can validate line and branch coverage on the entire codebase against an overall floor while applying different target thresholds specifically to newly added code.

Yes, the jacoco-maven-plugin is required. You must have the plugin and the policy configuration present in your Maven project to validate coverage against defined thresholds and emit the structured validation report.

For brownfield onboarding, configure the JaCoCo Maven plugin to set coverage floors at a baseline and progressively apply higher target thresholds to newly introduced changes to improve code quality over time.

Your Maven build fails because the JaCoCo coverage policy validates line and branch metrics against configured floors. If newly added or existing code drops below these thresholds, the gate prevents the regression.