Maven

From Glabwiki

Maven is a build management system for Java programming projects. It is similar to Ant in that it is used to build a project, but it does so much more. Maven is used to generate documentation, create metric reports, manage project websites, handle project dependencies, and more.

Availability

Maven is available from http://maven.apache.org. If you're running OS X Leopard, then it's already installed. If not, it's quite straightforward to install.

Helpful Commands

mvn help:describe -Dplugin=jdepend -Dfull

This will show complete information about all the goals, configuration, and parameters of a particular plugin. This particular invocation gives information about the "jdepend" plugin; just replace jdepend with the name of whatever plugin you're looking for information on.

Resources

  • The official Maven website has pretty decent documentation, but it's a bit disjointed and scattered, without offering a good overview. Nevertheless, you can learn a lot from it.
  • Maven: The Definitive Guide, by Sonatype, is a freely-available book that covers all aspects of Maven. Definitely read it!
  • All the Maven plugins have pretty good documentation that will help you learn how to properly use and configure them.