Maven: A Developer's Notebook

Preface

What is Maven? The Maven web site (http://maven.apache.org) states the following:

Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. Based on the concept of a Project Object Model (POM), Maven can manage a project's build, reporting, and documentation from a central piece of information.

While this captures the idea of Maven, it doesn't really explain what Maven is about. Here's another attempt: Maven provides a rich development infrastructure (compilation, testing, reporting, collaboration, and documentation) from a simple description of any Java project. It is an easy way to build a project without having to build a build system.

Maven started as an attempt to simplify and standardize the complex, Ant-based build process used for Jakarta Turbine. As the build system became more baroque and the Turbine project split into smaller, more focused components, a need emerged for a tool to describe each subproject and manage dependencies. The complexity of this multiproject Ant build created an ideal environment for a new project management system, and Maven 1 is the product of this natural evolution. Maven is frequently compared to the current build tool of choice—Apache Ant. And, while Maven is the clear successor to build systems built around Apache Ant, such a statement tends to cause some controversy... Maven 1 reuses a number of Ant tasks, and when you customize a Maven 1 build, you will end up using the tools that Ant provides. Maven is on a higher conceptual ...