Apache Maven

Apache maven quick howto from http://maven.apache.org/guides/getting-started/maven-in-five-minutes.html

Creating a Project


On your command line, execute the following Maven goal:

shell# mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -DinteractiveMode=false

If you have just installed Maven, it may take a while on the first run. This is because Maven is downloading the most recent artifacts (plugin jars and other files) into your local repository. You may also need to execute the command a couple of times before it succeeds. This is because the remote server may time out before your downloads are complete. Don't worry, there are ways to fix that.

You will notice that the generate goal created a directory with the same name given as the artifactId. Change into that directory.
shell# cd my-app

Under this directory you will notice the following standard project structure.
my-app
|-- pom.xml
`-- src
|-- main
| `-- java
| `-- com
| `-- mycompany
| `-- app
| `-- App.java
`-- test
`-- java
`-- com
`-- mycompany
`-- app
`-- AppTest.java

The src/main/java directory contains the project source code, the src/test/java directory contains the test source, and the pom.xml is the project's Project Object Model, or POM.
The POM

The pom.xml file is the core of a project's configuration in Maven. It is a single configuration file that contains the majority of information required to build a project in just the way you want. The POM is huge and can be daunting in its complexity, but it is not necessary to understand all of the intricacies just yet to use it effectively. This project's POM is:
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.mycompany.app</groupId>
<artifactId>my-app</artifactId>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>Maven Quick Start Archetype</name>
<url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>junit</groupId>
<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
<version>4.8.2</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>
What did I just do?

You executed the Maven goal archetype:generate, and passed in various parameters to that goal. The prefix archetype is the plugin that contains the goal. If you are familiar with Ant, you may conceive of this as similar to a task. This goal created a simple project based upon an archetype. Suffice it to say for now that a plugin is a collection of goals with a general common purpose. For example the jboss-maven-plugin, whose purpose is "deal with various jboss items".
Build the Project

shell# mvn package

The command line will print out various actions, and end with the following:
...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 2 seconds
[INFO] Finished at: Thu Jul 07 21:34:52 CEST 2011
[INFO] Final Memory: 3M/6M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unlike the first command executed (archetype:generate) you may notice the second is simply a single word - package. Rather than a goal, this is a phase. A phase is a step in the build lifecycle, which is an ordered sequence of phases. When a phase is given, Maven will execute every phase in the sequence up to and including the one defined. For example, if we execute the compile phase, the phases that actually get executed are:
validate
generate-sources
process-sources
generate-resources
process-resources
compile

You may test the newly compiled and packaged JAR with the following command:
shell# java -cp target/my-app-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar com.mycompany.app.App

Which will print the quintessential:
Hello World!