the maven development tools ( mavendev) is not hte issue, the issue is m2e 1.6 chokes STS with the following exception
!ENTRY org.eclipse.jface 4 2 2014-10-10 09:28:16.566
!MESSAGE Problems occurred when invoking code from plug-in: "org.eclipse.jface".
!STACK 0
java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.eclipse.jface.viewers.ViewerCell.getStyleRanges(ViewerCell.java:195)
....
!MESSAGE An internal error occurred during: "Updating Maven Project".
!STACK 0
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/maven/project/MavenProject
at org.springframework.ide.eclipse.maven.internal.core.SpringProjectConfigurator.doConfigure(SpringProjectConfigurator.java:42)
at org.springframework.ide.eclipse.maven.AbstractSpringProjectConfigurator.configure(AbstractSpringProjectConfigurator.java:43)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.project.configurator.AbstractLifecycleMapping.configure(AbstractLifecycleMapping.java:120)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.project.ProjectConfigurationManager$3.call(ProjectConfigurationManager.java:477)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.project.ProjectConfigurationManager$3.call(ProjectConfigurationManager.java:1)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.embedder.MavenExecutionContext.executeBare(MavenExecutionContext.java:176)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.embedder.MavenExecutionContext.execute(MavenExecutionContext.java:151)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.project.ProjectConfigurationManager.updateProjectConfiguration(ProjectConfigurationManager.java:470)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.project.ProjectConfigurationManager.updateProjectConfiguration0(ProjectConfigurationManager.java:408)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.project.ProjectConfigurationManager$2.call(ProjectConfigurationManager.java:321)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.project.ProjectConfigurationManager$2.call(ProjectConfigurationManager.java:1)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.embedder.MavenExecutionContext.executeBare(MavenExecutionContext.java:176)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.embedder.MavenExecutionContext.execute(MavenExecutionContext.java:151)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.embedder.MavenExecutionContext.execute(MavenExecutionContext.java:99)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.embedder.MavenImpl.execute(MavenImpl.java:1349)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.internal.project.ProjectConfigurationManager.updateProjectConfiguration(ProjectConfigurationManager.java:318)
at org.eclipse.m2e.core.ui.internal.UpdateMavenProjectJob.runInWorkspace(UpdateMavenProjectJob.java:77)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.resources.InternalWorkspaceJob.run(InternalWorkspaceJob.java:38)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:54)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.maven.project.MavenProject cannot be found by org.springframework.ide.eclipse.maven_3.6.1.201408250730-RELEASE
at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.loader.BundleLoader.findClassInternal(BundleLoader.java:432)
at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.loader.BundleLoader.findClass(BundleLoader.java:345)
at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.loader.BundleLoader.findClass(BundleLoader.java:337)
at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.loader.ModuleClassLoader.loadClass(ModuleClassLoader.java:160)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)
... 19 more