Every software developer works with Integrated development environments (IDE) like eclipse, netbeans, MS Visual Studio etc. It gives them easy way to write code, that helps. Perhaps while building a project into distribution package, simple IDE may not be of help, since role of IDE is to support individual developer and not the project team.
Hence there comes need of build tool, which would automate several tasks of build process like shutdown servers, compile code, automate tests and generate reports etc. Maven can be viewed as build tool that can help us address these areas with industry standard and industry supported plugins.
However, Maven is more than a build tool. It can do automatic dependency resolution and distribution. It can help manage project source tree across different teams and repositories. It can generate ready to start framework with respect to type of architecture say simple java project that distributes JAR, simple web application that distributes WAR or complex enterprise application that distributes EAR.
Maven is open source tool backed by vast community. It is basically a plugin framework, with extensive set of ready made plugins which we can use or we can write custom one that solves specific problem of life. Hence it is extensible as well.
Several IDEs too support maven. For sake of simplicity and my family of JAVA, we will use eclipse to demonstrate the maven.
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