Validate Your changes.xml File

Since 2.1, a mojo is provided to validate your changes file.
You can attach this mojo to the pre-site phase if you want the validation to be performed automatically when you generate the site.

Configuring the Plugin

First you must configure the plugin and tell it to validate your changes file.

<project>
  ...
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-changes-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.1</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>validate-changes</id>
            <phase>pre-site</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>changes-validate</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <!-- if set to true the build will fail if the changes file is invalid,
                   if set to false warnings will be logged. -->
              <failOnError>true</failOnError>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  ...
</project>