In maven , we have several commands to remember and i was thinking of having a page with simple command reference so that i can have a quick look whenever needed. I have compiled a list of mostly used commands and some settings and useful links. Now publishing it so that it could be useful to others too . Feel free to add more commands to the comments section.

1. Compile

 mvn compile

2. Compile (offline)

 mvn -o compile

will save you a lot of time

3. Install the generated output to the respective repository

mvn install

4. Clean Target Directory

mvn clean

5. Package as jar or war

mvn package

6. Generate Eclipse project descriptors

mvn eclipse:eclipse

7. Run unit tests

mvn test

8. Run unit tests and print the output to console rather than to file

mvn -Dsurefire.useFile=false test

9. Run individual test

mvn test –Dtest=org.shankh.mavenTest

10. Package without running tests

mvn package -Dmaven.test.skip

11. Install without Running Tests

mvn install -Dmaven.test.skip

12. To download source code into your maven repo:

mvn eclipse:clean eclipse:eclipse –DdownloadSources=true

13. Create a new project

mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app

Comment : Instead of ‘generate’ i wrote ‘create’ initially, but as simonz correctly pointed out, mvn archetype:create is now deprecated. so use mvn archetype:generate instead.

14. Create a Web Application

mvn archetype:generate
        -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.maven.archetypes
        -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-webapp
        -DgroupId=com.mycompany
        -DartifactId=my-app

15. Start embedded Jetty

mvn jetty:run

16. Deploys a WAR to embedded instance of Jetty and starts it

mvn jetty:run-war

17. Specify Java Build version

<build>
<plugins>
  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
      <source>1.5</source>
      <target>1.5</target>
    </configuration>
  </plugin>
 </plugins>
</build>

18. Generate site for a single project

mvn site

19. Generate Javadoc

mvn javadoc:javadoc

20. Set Maven_opts System environment variable (will save you from out of memory error)

MAVEN_OPTS=”-Xmx512m -Xms256m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m”

21. Setting M2 variable in eclipse (informing of repository location

Goto Window -> Preferences -> Java -> build path -> classpath variable -> New
Name: M2_REPO
Path:
C:\Users\my_user_name\.m2\repository  (In vista)
C:\Documents And Settings\my_user_name\.m2\repository  (In XP)
~/.m2/repository (in Linus/ unix flavours)

22. Links

1. Settings.xml sample: http://maven.apache.org/maven-settings/settings.html

2. Maven Download: http://maven.apache.org/download.html

3. M2 eclipse download: http://m2eclipse.codehaus.org

4. M2 eclipse update site: http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/update

5. Cargo: http://cargo.codehaus.org/

6. Jetty: http://jetty.mortbay.com/jetty/