This guide assumes you are using Maven 2.0.4 or later ([http://maven.apache.org])

Getting started

Before we get too far ahead, it is important to know some basics concepts of Maven. The most important thing to understand is that unlike Ant, Maven has no concept of procedural tasks that get run. Instead, Maven has a concept of a build lifecycle in which plugins (somewhat similar to Ant asks) can attach to. When you execute a maven build, you specify a point in the lifecycle that you want the project built up to. The phase compile comes before test, and test comes before package, and package comes before install.

Installing

The install phase simply means that maven should build up the project ("package"), and then install it to your local repository (found in ~/.m2/repository). There is can be used by any other maven project you build. To run a basic install, simply invoke:

> mvn install

That's it! Maven will download all dependencies it needs, run all unit tests, package up the jars, and then install the jars locally. You can also find the jars in the target directories of each module. For example, action/target/action-2.0-SNAPSHOT.jar would be where the main jar is built.

Other phases

There are other phases that can be useful when working with Maven. The package phase will just jar (or war) up the modules. The test phase will only run the unit tests. The compile phase will only build the source code (but not the test sources). And the clean phase will remove all artifacts, typically the entire target directory.

Build profiles

Now that you know the basics with the Maven build, there is a bit more to learn. M

Building IDE project files

Tips

• mirror
• having to run "mvn install" sometimes before the build works