The default type of artifact generated by Maven is JAR. If the packaging element is absent, or specified as jar, Maven considers it a JAR project. A JAR project combines all the source classes along with the necessary project resources to a single file. This JAR file can be distributed for it to be used elsewhere.
Maven is set up on your system and is verified for work. To do this, refer to Chapter 1, Getting Started.
- Open a simple Maven project, in our case
simple-project. - Verify that the type is absent or set to
jar:<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>com.packt.cookbook</groupId> <artifactId>simple-project</artifactId> <packaging>jar</packaging>
- Run the following Maven command:
mvn clean package - Observe the output:
[INFO] --- maven-jar-plugin:2.4:jar (default-jar) @ simple-project --- [INFO] Building jar: C:UsersDeepaDocumentsapache-maven-cookbooksimple-project argetsimple-project-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
The package option is part of Maven's default lifecycle. When Maven is run with the package option, it runs all the phases up to and prior to it, in order. Maven first compiles the project, runs the tests, and then, based on the packaging type, invokes the suitable plugin to package. In our case, as we specified the packaging as jar, Maven used the jar goal of the Maven JAR plugin to create a JAR artifact in the target folder.