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Getting Started with Maven

Maven provides a simple and fast way to build and deploy applications.

In this course we will use it to automate our development phases.

  1. Install Maven

    Well, if you are using a decent IDE, it is already embedded 👍

    Tip

    You may need to add it to your PATH to use outside your IDE ...

    Otherwise, you can install it using chocolatey :

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    choco install maven

  2. The POM

    This is where all the magic happens ! It is the xml file where you can add all the things your app needs to work.

    • Dependencies:

      The libraries your application need to function. These are called dependencies.

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      <dependencies>
    ...
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    ...
</dependencies>

    • Plugins

      Maven is - at its heart - a plugin execution framework. All work is done by plugins. The best idea is to look online for a plugin doing what you want to do.

      In our case, we want to build Docker images and create Helm Charts for Kubernetes.

      Fortunately, numerous plugins doing such thing are available. We may use :

      They are declared in the pom as following :

      Warning

      This is just an example, DO NOT change your code right now :)

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      <build>
    ...
    <plugin>
        <groupId>com.kiwigrid</groupId>
        <artifactId>helm-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>5.4</version>
        <configuration>
            ...
        </configuration>
        <executions>
            <execution>
                <id>helm-package</id>
                <phase>package</phase>
                <goals>
                    <goal>package</goal>
                </goals>
            </execution>
        </executions>
    </plugin>
    ...
</build>
      One important thing to note is that we can configure plugins.

      We can also set when they enter the game in the build by associating them with maven phases.

      And of course, tell the plugin what to do using its own goals.

      Tip

      Maven has several phases available, happening in this order : 

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          <phases>
      <phase>validate</phase>
      <phase>initialize</phase>
      <phase>generate-sources</phase>
      <phase>process-sources</phase>
      <phase>generate-resources</phase>
      <phase>process-resources</phase>
      <phase>compile</phase>
      <phase>process-classes</phase>
      <phase>generate-test-sources</phase>
      <phase>process-test-sources</phase>
      <phase>generate-test-resources</phase>
      <phase>process-test-resources</phase>
      <phase>test-compile</phase>
      <phase>process-test-classes</phase>
      <phase>test</phase>
      <phase>prepare-package</phase>
      <phase>package</phase>
      <phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
      <phase>integration-test</phase>
      <phase>post-integration-test</phase>
      <phase>verify</phase>
      <phase>install</phase>
      <phase>deploy</phase>
    </phases>