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<h1>Getting Started with Maven</h1>

<h2>General</h2>

<p>Although Maven can be used integrated in your favorite IDE, its basic usage is as a commandline tool.  So, go download the latest release and install it.  To begin using Maven, you  have to download and install it.</p>

<p>Begin here: <a href="http://maven.apache.org/download.html">http://maven.apache.org/download.html</a></p>

<p>I started with Maven 2.0.4.  Download the binary distribution that suits your operating system, e.g. tar.gz (linux), or zip (windows).  Unzip the contents to directory that is accessible to your user.  My installation is at /home/piratepete/maven-2.0.4 .</p>

<p>However, we can't use Maven just yet. Maven requires two environement variables: M2_HOME, and JAVA_HOME. M2_HOME refers to the directory where you unpacked your Maven, while JAVA_HOME, refers to your JDK directory.</p>

<p>For Unix users: </p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="code" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2NvZGV9&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
M2_HOME=/home/piratepete/maven-2.0.4
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>and</p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="code" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2NvZGV9&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
JAVA_HOME=/home/priatepete/Java/j2sdk1.4.2_12
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>For Windows users:</p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="code" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2NvZGV9&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
M2_HOME=C:\maven-2.0.4
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>and</p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="code" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2NvZGV9&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\j2sdk1.4.2_12
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>Environment variables are handy e.g. if you change things a lot. After you install Maven you'll need to set your PATH to the $M2_HOME/bin directory. Although modifying the PATH environmental variable is not required, it is highly recommended so thatyou can use Maven outside its installation directory.</p>

<p>For Unix users: </p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="noformat" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e25vZm9ybWF0fQ&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
PATH=$M2_HOME/bin:$PATH
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>For Windows users:</p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="code" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2NvZGV9&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
PATH=%M2_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>Now open a terminal or cmd window.  Type the following and you'll see something like:</p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="noformat" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e25vZm9ybWF0fQ&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
piratepete@piratepete-laptop:~$ mvn --version
Maven version: 2.0.4
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>or</p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="code" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2NvZGV9&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
C:\My Projects> mvn --version Maven version: 2.0.4
</pre></td></tr></table>

<h2>Maven for Make and GNU Autotools users</h2>

<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="info" data-macro-parameters="title=Please Contribute" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2luZm86dGl0bGU9UGxlYXNlIENvbnRyaWJ1dGV9&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="RICH_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body">
<p>This section is incomplete. If you have experience with Make, Maven, and/or the GNU Autotools, please add any information here that you think might be useful to new Maven users.</p></td></tr></table>
<p>Since both <a href="http://maven.apache.org">Maven</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_build_system">GNU Autotools </a> are involved with configuring and executing a software build, there is much overlap in their capabilities and the scenarios in which they are used. However, there are also some significant differences. It is hoped that this section will help bridge the conceptual gap between these tools.</p>

<p>From this point on, our discussion of Make will be implied by discussion of the GNU Autotools. We do this in part to simplify (in the future we have separate Make and GNU Autotools sections of this page), and in part becuase the conventions used by hand-rolled Makefiles are generally a subset of the requirements documented in the GNU Coding Standards.</p>

<p>Over the years a number of conventions have come into widespread use for expected targets and behaviors in Makefiles. The &quot;best practices&quot; in this area are documented in the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/">GNU Coding Standards</a> (in particular, see the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Makefile-Conventions.html#Makefile-Conventions">&quot;Makefile Conventions&quot;</a> subsection of <a href="http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Managing-Releases.html#Managing-Releases">&quot;The Release Process&quot;</a> section.</p>

<p>In Make, the developer typically supplies (at least) the following targets: <code>all</code>, <code>clean</code>, and <code>install</code>, and often times <code>check</code> (or <code>test</code>), as well.</p>

<p>In Maven, the &quot;targets&quot; are really the names of a <a href="http://cvs.peopleware.be/training/maven/maven2/buildLifecyclePhases.html">phase</a> of one of the maven lifecycles. There are three Maven lifecycles: <a href="http://cvs.peopleware.be/training/maven/maven2/buildLifecyclePhases.html#default">default</a>, <a href="http://cvs.peopleware.be/training/maven/maven2/buildLifecyclePhases.html#clean">clean</a>, and <a href="http://cvs.peopleware.be/training/maven/maven2/buildLifecyclePhases.html#site">site</a>.</p>

<p>When a user invokes a Make target (or targets), Make uses the timestamps of dependent artifacts to decide which previous targets need to be rebuilt prior to building the requested target(s). In maven, the user invokes a phase name (or names), and Maven runs all previous build phases that belong to the same lifecycle as the invoked phase(s).</p>

<p>A typical Make invocation might look like this:</p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="noformat" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e25vZm9ybWF0fQ&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
$ make clean &amp;&amp; make all
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>A typical Maven-2.x invocation might look like this:</p>
<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="noformat" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e25vZm9ybWF0fQ&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
$ mvn clean install
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>Users and developers familiar with the conventional Make target <code>install</code> might cringe at that <code>mvn</code> invocation, but the <code>install</code> phase in Maven is not at all like the target by that name typically found in a <code>Makefile</code>. In fact, Maven does not have a build phase that maps to the functionality typically performed by <code>make install</code> (and I have never seen such functionality kludged into a Maven build). This is one of the areas where the intended audiences of the tools diverge; <code>make install</code> is (typically, but not necessarily) intended for sysadmins actually installing software on a system for use by end-users, whereas <code>mvn install</code> is typically done by a developer working in his home directory, and simply copies the current build artifact beneath a special directory (<code>${HOME}/.m2/repsoitory/...</code>) that will be queried by other Maven builds that declare a dependency on the artifact.</p>