Maven Plugins

Introduction to Maven Plugins

Maven Plugins is a project management tool. Maven is based on the Project Object Model i.e. POM. Primarily maven is used as a build automation tool for Java projects. Maven can be used with other programming languages e.g.: Ruby, scala, etc. Plugins are where the real action takes place in project execution.

Example: Compiling Code, Testing Code, and Creating JAR/WAR files, etc…

Types of Maven Plugins

It provides two types of plugins:

1. Build Plugins: Build Plugins will be executed during the build process and they should be configured in the<build> <build/> tag of POM file.
2. Reporting Plugins: Reporting Plugins will be executed during site generation and should be configured in <reporting><reporting/> tag of POM file.

Different Plugins Supported by Maven

Below are mentioned some of the different Plugins of Maven:

1. Core Plugins of Maven

Plugins refer to the default phases (i.e. clean, compile) may also have multiple objectives.

2. Reporting Plugins

These Plugins generate reports and execute under generation lifecycle

3. Packaging Tools/Types

These relate to packaging types

4. Miscellaneous tools available through Maven by default

These are by default tools that are available through Maven

Configuring of Maven Plugins

The Configuration to Plug-ins are given below:

<project>
<groupId>com.org.educba.Example</groupId>
<artifactId>Jar_Name</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>Jar</packaging>
<name>Jar_Name</name>
<url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
</properties>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.edu</groupId>
<artifactId>edu-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.2.4</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>bind</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build&gt
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>junit</groupId>
<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
<version>3.8.1</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>

• In most cases, Plugins should be added within the build/plugin section.
• Adding plugins in the build/plugins section directly part of the default maven builds.
• Adding plugins in build/plugin management/plugins are not part of default maven build, it’s a management.
• Ordering of plugins sections within pom.xml is irrelevant in most of the cases.
• Plugin elements within build/plugins sections may be important.
• Maven 3.0.3 version plugin execution will be invoked in their order of declaration in pom.xml file, the order is required in this case it may affect the behavior of the build process.

Conclusion

Since maven is built-in plugins based architecture; it enables the users to make utilization of any application through standard inputs. Plugins are the central feature of Maven allows reuse of common build logic with multiple projects. Plugins behavior can be customized through unique plugin parameters exposed by a description of each plugin goal.

One of the most important features of maven is dependency management i.e. automatic updating and dependency closure. It also has the ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously. Dependencies and repositories are external java files required for project repositories i.e. JAR files, Maven automatically downloads the repositories from the central maven repository and puts in a local repository in case of absence.

Recommended Articles

This is a guide to Maven Plugins. Here we discuss the basic concept along with types of Plugins in Maven, Configuring Plug-ins as well as some different plugins that are supported by Maven. You can also go through our other suggested articles to learn more –

1. Maven Life Cycle
2. Maven Exclude Dependency
3. Maven Eclipse Plugin
4. Maven Surefire