14.2. Managing builds with Maven

Apache Maven was released as part of the Apache Turbine web application framework, with the purpose of providing a build environment that natively supports recurring processes in mid- to large-sized projects. Maven is written in Java, and being part of the Apache project, is free and open source software.

As opposed to Ant, Maven is modeled around the software project in its entirety, and makes describing and managing it its primary goal. Where Ant focuses on fine-grained tasks (such as copy) that must be manually wired together in a procedural fashion to form an overarching goal (such as building a distribution package), Maven focuses on the big picture and offers native support for recurring project management tasks such as dependency management, project modularization, build management, release and distribution management, generating documentation, and even generating entire project websites. It’s much more than a build system: it’s a project lifecycle management system, although for simplicity and consistency, we’ll stick with the term build system for the remainder of this chapter.