What is Maven?, Maven build process steps?, Maven environment steps?, and Advantages of Maven?

What is Maven?, Maven build process steps?,  Maven environment steps?, and  Advantages of Maven?

What is Maven?

Maven is a Java builds tool, and project management tool. Using this build tool, we can automate build process steps for the java project.

Build Process Steps:

1. Setting required “.java” files into class path.
2. Compiling “.java” files.
3. Creating “.war” or “.jar” or “.ear” files.
4. Deploying and un-deploying “.jar” or “.war” or “.ear” files.
5. Starting and stopping the server.
6. Generating Test reports and code coverage reports.

If we automate build steps for project then we can decreases project development time and project cost as well. In addition to Maven we may have one more build tool ANT, using ANT also we can automate build process steps for the project. Maven is given by apache foundation and it is not license version so that we can use this build tool in our project with free of cost.

Maven Environment Steps:

If we want to work with Maven, we need to download Maven software from official site  http://maven.apache.org/download.html, here download latest maven version, Maven software is available for Linux and Windows separately, and for Windows Maven software is available in a form of .zip file with name apache-maven-x.y.z-bin.zip, Source code and API files are available with the name of apache-maven-x.y.z-src.zip, so if you want to see the source code of the Maven, you can download apache-maven-x.y.z-src.zip file.

After downloading Maven .zip file, extract somewhere in our system. After extracting Maven software .zip file, you will get the below folder structure.

After extracting Maven software you need to create three environment variables. Before setting maven path variables, make sure Java path variable and JAVA_HOME variables are sited or not. For running maven version Java is required.

For setting variables right click on the Computer -> go to properties -> Click on Advanced System Variables -> Click on Environment Variables -> here in User variables Click new Button and add the below variables

1. MAVEN_HOME = {path_of_the_maven_sfotware}\apache-maven-3.3.9\
2. M2_HOME = %MAVEN_HOME%
3. Path = %MAVEN_HOME%\bin\

Here M2_HOME variable is the optional. If we set these environment variables we can say that Maven software is installed successfully. To verify Maven software is installed or not, Open command prompt and execute “mvn –version” command from any of the location. Then you will get version of Maven Software and Maven home location, java version, Java Home path location and OS related information, See the below diagram.

Advantages of Maven:

As we know Maven is a build tool. In addition to that it will create any type of java project that is Standalone project, Web Project, Structs Project, Hibernate Project, Spring Project, etc…. And it will also download required jar files for our project. If we wants to download required dependences using maven, then developer needs to specify dependency information on the pom.xml file of Maven Software. See the next post for pom.xml file configuration and tags and how to add Maven dependencies.