Maven Build Lifecycles

Maven build lifecycles are a series of phases that define the build process of a Maven project.

There are three build lifecycles in Maven:

  1. default: This is the main build lifecycle in Maven. It includes the following phases: validate, compile, test, package, verify, and install. These phases are executed in order when you run the mvn command with no arguments.
  1. clean: This lifecycle is used to clean the build directory of a project. It includes the following phases: pre-clean, clean, and post-clean.
  1. site: This lifecycle is used to generate project documentation. It includes the following phases: pre-site, site, post-site, site-deploy. The site-deploy phase is optional and is used to deploy the generated documentation to a web server.

Each lifecycle consists of a set of phases, which are executed in order. When you run a specific phase, all previous phases in that lifecycle are also executed. For example, when you run the package phase in the default lifecycle, the validate, compile, and test phases are also executed.

Here's a brief description of each phase in 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
  • package: take the compiled code and package it in its distributable format, such as a JAR file
  • 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
  • deploy: copy the final package to the remote repository for sharing with other developers and projects