Before we create a Maven project, let's explore the views and preferences specific to Maven in Eclipse:
- Select the Window | Show View | Other... menu.
- Type Maven in the filter box. You will see two views for Maven:
Figure 2.25: Maven views
- Select Maven Repositories view and click OK. This view is opened in the bottom tab window of Eclipse. You can see the location of the local and remote repositories.
- Right-click on a global repository to see the options to index the repository:
Figure 2.26: The Maven Repositories view
- Open Eclipse Preferences and type Maven in the filter box to see all the Maven preferences:
Figure 2.27: Maven preferences
You should set the Maven preferences to refresh repository indexes on startup, so that the latest libraries are available when you add dependencies to your project (we will learn how to add dependencies shortly).
- Click on the Maven node in Preferences and set the following options:
Figure 2.28: Maven preferences for updating indexes on startup