Building a JAR project

The default type of artifact generated by Maven is JAR. If the packaging element is absent, or specified as jar, Maven considers it a JAR project. A JAR project combines all the source classes along with the necessary project resources to a single file. This JAR file can be distributed for it to be used elsewhere.

Getting ready

Maven is set up on your system and is verified for work. To do this, refer to Chapter 1, Getting Started.

How to do it...

1. Open a simple Maven project, in our case simple-project.

2. Verify that the type is absent or set to jar:

     <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
     <groupId>com.packt.cookbook</groupId>
     <artifactId>simple-project</artifactId>
     <packaging>jar</packaging>

3. Run the following Maven command:

   mvn clean package
   

4. Observe the output:

   [INFO] --- maven-jar-plugin:2.4:jar (default-jar) @ simple-project ---
   [INFO] Building jar: C:\Users\Deepa\Documents\apache-maven-cookbook\simple-project\target\simple...