Build Lifecycle - Maven

Recently i fixed some issues in the build and refreshed by knowledge about maven. I read some articles and decided to share few facts about the build life cycle - maven.

There are 3 built-in life cycles

1. default - handles project deployment
2. clean - handles project cleaning 
3. site - handles the creation of documentation 

Each of these build lifecycles is defined by a different list of build phases. Lets look into the build phases of the default lifecycle

• validate - validate the project is correct and all necessary information is available
• compile - compile the source code of the project
• test - test the compiled source code using a suitable unit testing framework. These tests should not require the code be packaged or deployed
• package - take the compiled code and package it in its distributable format, such as a JAR.
• integration-test - process and deploy the package if necessary into an environment where integration tests can be run
• verify - run any checks to verify the package is valid and meets quality criteria
• install - install the package into the local repository, for use as a dependency in other projects locally
• deploy - done in an integration or release environment, copies the final package to the remote repository for sharing with other developers and projects.

These phases are executed sequentially. Therefore, mvn deploy will do everything.

Note: if you call a build phase, it will execute not only that build phase, but also every build phase prior to the called build phase

Read more at http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the-lifecycle.html