Understanding the Maven lifecycle, phases, and goals

As we start using Maven, we need to understand the Maven project lifecycle. Maven is implemented based around the concept of a build lifecycle. This means there is a clearly defined process to build and distribute artifacts with Maven.

What makes up a lifecycle? The stages of a lifecycle are called phases. In each phase, one or more goals can be executed.

Getting ready

Maven is set up on your system and is verified as working. For setting up Apache Maven, refer to the first three recipes of Chapter 1, Getting Started.

How to do it...

To build a Maven project, perform the following steps:

1. Open the command prompt.
2. Run one of the Maven commands that we are familiar with:

   mvn package
   

3. Observe the various steps that get executed.

How it works...

Maven has three built-in build lifecycles:

• default: The default lifecycle handles project build and deployment
• clean: The clean lifecycle cleans up the files and folders produced by Maven
• site: The site lifecycle...