Running a custom executable

There are many situations when you want Maven to run a specific executable on your computer. A simple use case would be to run the JAR that you created. Another case would be to have Maven run commands that are not provided as plugins (for instance, create a native Windows installer).

Maven provides support to run any executable system in a separate process along with Java programs in the same virtual machine on which Maven runs. The Maven Exec plugin provides this support using the exec goal (to run in a separate process) and the java goal (to run Java programs in the same process).

How to do it...

1. Open a simple Maven project (simple-project).
2. Run the command:

   mvn clean package exec:java –Dexec.mainClass="com.packt.cookbook.App"
   

3. Observe the results:
   

How it works...

We wanted to run the JAR file that we had created in the project. To do this, we called the java goal of the Maven Exec plugin. We provided the plugin with the required parameter (mainClass...