Newbie Developer's FAQ

How do I start coding?

Read the Guide to Building Maven.
Read Getting Started with Maven.
For your convenience, here is a script getting you up and running on Unix/Linux/Mac OS with the trunk. You need to have Ant and Subversion installed.

#!/bin/bash
which java 1>/dev/null 2>&1
if [[ $? != 0 ]]; then
    echo "Could not find java executable. Please install and add it to your PATH"
    exit 1
fi

which ant 1>/dev/null 2>&1
if [[ $? != 0 ]]; then
    echo "Could not find ant executable. Please install and add it to your PATH"
    exit 1
fi

if [ ! -d "maven-dev/.svn" ]; then
    svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/maven/trunks maven-dev
    if [[ $? != 0 ]]; then
        echo "Error checking out Maven source code"
        exit 1
    fi
fi

dir="$PWD"

cd "maven-dev/components"

if [ -e "$M2_HOME" ]; then
    version=$(cat pom.xml|sed -e "/<parent>/,/<\/parent>/ d"|grep -m1 "<version>"|sed -e "s/ *<version>\(.*\)<\/version> */\1/g")
    export M2_HOME="$dir/target/maven-$version"
fi

mkdir -p "$M2_HOME"
echo "Using M2_HOME=$M2_HOME"

ant
if [[ $? != 0 ]]; then
    echo "Error building Maven"
    exit 1
fi

echo "Done. You might want to set the following variables:"
echo "export M2_HOME=$M2_HOME"
echo "export PATH=$M2_HOME/bin:$PATH"

How do I write plugins?

Read Your First Mojo.
Read the Mojo API Specification.
Read chapter 5 of the Maven Book.

I want to propose...

We're glad you found the right one

If you have a proposal, have a look at the All Proposals, the User Proposals and the Developer's List if the issue has already been discussed.
If not, add your proposal to the User Proposals.
If you have a proposal that might need discussion, you can also post it to the Developer's List.