Part 1: Getting Started

Maven is powered by a number of Java classes and, thusly, relies on Java being installed. Beyond that, the majority of what it needs to run it will download itself. The installation consists of downloading an archive and extracting it to the location of your choice. You set up a few environment variables, put Maven's bin directory on your execution path and you're good to go.

Within the bin directory is the mvn command which is the main way you kick off Maven processes. It provides basic command-line help through the -h command-line option and more detailed help through a dedicated help plugin.

General user-specific configuration is managed in a settings.xml file located in the ~/.m2/ directory. Local system-wide defaults are located in a settings.xml located in $M2_HOME/conf.