Introduction

Maven is a powerful project management tool for building and managing Java-based projects. It provides a standard way to build, test, and deploy applications, as well as manage dependencies and generate project documentation.

With Maven, you can easily define your project's structure and dependencies in an XML file called a "pom.xml" (Project Object Model). The pom.xml file includes information about the project's dependencies, build process, testing configuration, and other project-specific information.

Maven helps automate many tasks, such as compiling code, running tests, and packaging the project into a deployable format. It also supports various plugins that provide additional functionality, such as code analysis, code coverage, and code quality reports.

Maven is widely used in the Java community and is supported by many popular IDEs, such as Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. It also integrates well with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools like Jenkins and Bamboo.

Local Repository & Central Repository

Maven has two main types of repositories: local repositories and remote repositories, such as the central repository.

Local Repository:

A local repository is a directory on your local machine where Maven stores all the project artifacts and dependencies downloaded from remote repositories. Maven will download dependencies from remote repositories the first time it is needed and store them in the local repository for future use. By default, the local repository is located in the .m2 directory in the user's home directory.

Central Repository

The central repository is a remote repository maintained by the Maven community that contains a large collection of open-source libraries and artifacts. When Maven needs to download a dependency, it will first check the local repository, and if the dependency is not found there, it will check the central repository. If the dependency is found in the central repository, it will be downloaded and cached in the local repository for future use.

Maven can also be configured to use other remote repositories, such as company-internal repositories or third-party repositories. These repositories can be specified in the pom.xml file or in the user's settings.xml file