What Is Maven?

Maven is like duct tape. It holds the world together. It's also like a Swiss army knife. It can do anything except sing. Maven is a software project and tool primarily used with Java-based projects, but that can also be used to manage projects in other programming languages like C# and Ruby. Maven helps manage builds, documentation, reporting, dependencies, software configuration management (SCM), releases and distribution. Many integrated development environments (IDEs) provide plug-ins or add-ons for Maven, thus enabling Maven to compile projects within the IDE. Maven is a blacksmith: it takes raw materials and fashions them into something useful. The raw materials are your software project's source code; the result is a jar file containing your project's compiled classes. Maven isn't just a jar-maker. It also provides an easy way to organize your project's source code into modules, which lets you break up large projects into smaller pieces that are easier to understand and maintain. It helps you define dependencies between modules so that when you upgrade one module, Maven will automatically update any other modules that depend on it. Maven also has commands for automating everyday tasks like building, testing and publishing your project's artifacts (i.e., jars). Maven is like a chocolate chip cookie. The fundamental unit of Maven is the project object model (POM), an XML file containing information about the software project, configuration details that Maven uses in building this project, and any dependencies on external components or modules and the build order. This POM file is like the flour, sugar and eggs that go into making a chocolate chip cookie. You can't just make a cookie from those ingredients (unless you're good at baking). You also need some chocolate chips! In Maven's case, these are plug-ins that provide a set of goals that can be executed. Plug-ins handle all work. There are numerous Maven plug-ins for building, testing, SCM, running a Web server, etc., configured in the POM file, where some essential plug-ins are included by default. Like chocolate chips in cookies, these plugs allow us to add additional functionality to our projects while keeping everything together as one coherent entity.