Maven: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 3. A Simple Maven Project

Introduction

In this chapter, we introduce a simple project created from scratch using the Maven Archetype plugin. This elementary application provides us with the opportunity to discuss some core Maven concepts while you follow along with the development of the project.

Before you can start using Maven for complex, multimodule builds, we have to start with the basics. If you’ve used Maven before, you’ll notice that it does a good job of taking care of the details. Your builds tend to “just work,” and you only really need to dive into the details of Maven when you want to customize the default behavior or write a custom plugin. However, when you do need to dive into the details, a thorough understanding of the core concepts is essential. This chapter aims to introduce you to the simplest possible Maven project and then presents some of the core concepts that make Maven a solid build platform. After reading it, you’ll have an fundamental understanding of the build lifecycle, Maven repositories, dependency management, and the Project Object Model (POM).

Downloading This Chapter’s Example

This chapter develops a very simple example that will be used to explore core concepts of Maven. If you follow the steps as described, you shouldn’t need to download the examples to recreate the code produced by Maven. We will be using the Maven Archetype plugin to create this simple project, and in this chapter we won’t modify the project in any way. ...