The typical use case is that you want the plugin to run whenever you invoke
mvn site
That way, the report will be added to the generated site. This is done by simply adding the following section to your POM:
<reporting> <plugins> ... <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.rat</groupId> <artifactId>apache-rat-plugin</artifactId> <version>0.16.1</version> </plugin> ... </plugins> </reporting>