maven.tar.gz

Maven is the de-facto build tool of choice for Java projects and has wide adoption at the enterprise level.

In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of Maven so that you can start to inject build automation into your own projects. You’ll start by exploring the basics such as plugins, goals, coordinates, and lifecycles.

In the latter half, you will dive into more advanced concepts such as dependencies, inheritance, aggregation, and build profiles. 

By the end of this course, you will have just the right amount of knowledge for you to quickly become productive when working with Maven.

Build Java Projects with Maven

A Maven project is described by a POM file. POM stands for **Project Object Model** and is a declarative description of a project. It defines the unique Maven coordinates of the project, the dependencies of the project, required plugins, any parameters required for the goals Maven executes in the context of the project, etc. It is an XML file that contains information about the project and configuration details used by Maven to build the project. Maven, when invoked, looks for the POM file and works from it. In the absence of a POM file, Maven will throw an error. When executing a task or goal, Maven looks for the POM in the current directory. It reads the POM, gets the needed configuration information, then executes the goal. Some of the configurations that can be specified in the POM are the project dependencies, the plugins or goals that can be executed, the build profiles, and so on. Other information such as the project version, description, developers, mailing lists, and so on can also be specified.


Here's the minimal version of a POM file.

```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<project>

    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>io.datajek</groupId>
    <artifactId>empty-project</artifactId>
    <version>1</version>

</project>
```

The file contains minimal project description. It doesn't define any dependencies or plugins. If you run `mvn install` in the directory containing the above POM file, you'll see a successful build. Let's try that in the terminal below: 


This lesson explains the purpose and structure of the POM file.