What is Maven: Features

Maven is loaded with many valuable and useful features, which goes a long way towards explaining its popularity. Here are some of Maven’s more

noteworthy features:

1.  A huge, continuously growing repository of user libraries
2.  The ability to set up projects easily, using best practices
3. Dependency management, featuring automatic updating
4.  Backwards compatible with previous versions
5. Strong error and integrity reporting
6.  Automatic parent versioning
7.  Ensures consistent usage across all projects
8.  It’s extensible, and you can easily write plug-ins using scripting languages or java.

The Need for Maven

Maven is chiefly used for Java-based projects, helping to download dependencies, which refers to the libraries or JAR files. The tool helps get the right JAR files for each project as there may be different versions of separate packages.

After Maven, downloading dependencies doesn’t require visiting the official websites of different software. You can visit  https://mvnrepository.com/  to find libraries in different languages. The tool also helps to create the right project structure in struts, servlets, etc., which is essential for execution.

Build Tools Build tools are the tools or programs that help create an executable application from the source code. As the name suggests, it’s essential for building or scripting a wide variety of tasks.

The build tool is needed for the following processes:

1.  Generating source code
2. Generating documentation from the source code
3.  Compiling source code
4.  Packaging the compiled codes into JAR files
5.  Installing the packaged code in the local repository, server, or centralrepository

Project Object Model (POM)

Maven is so useful thanks to the Project Object Model (POM), which is an XML file that has all the information regarding project and configuration details. The POM has the description of the project, details regarding the versioning, and configuration

management of the project. The XML file is located in the project home directory. When you execute a task,

Maven searches for the POM in the current directory.

Advantages of Maven:

1.  Helps manage all the processes, such as building, documentation, releasing, and distribution in project management.
2.  Simplifies the process of project building
3.  Increases the performance of the project and the building process
4.  The task of downloading Jar files and other dependencies is done automatically
5. Provides easy access to all the required information. 
6.  Makes it easy for the developer to build a project in different environments without worrying about the dependencies, processes, etc.
7.  In Maven, it’s easy to add new dependencies by writing the dependency code in the pom file

Disadvantages:

1.  Maven requires installation in the working system and the Maven plug-in for the IDE
2.  If the Maven code for an existing dependency is unavailable, you cannot add that dependency using Maven itself.

Maven Lifecycle or Goals

1. Validate – validate the project is correct and all necessary information is available
2. Compile – compile the source code of the project
3. Test – test the compiled source code using a suitable unit testing framework. These tests should not require the code be packaged or deployed
4. package – take the compiled code and package it in its distributable format, such as a JAR.
5. Verify – run any checks on results of integration tests to ensure quality criteria are met
6. install – install the package into the local repository, for use as a dependency in other projects locally
7. deploy – done in the build environment, copies the final package to the remote repository for sharing with other developers and projects.