Understanding the pom file

Every Maven project has a pom file that defines what the project is all about and how it should be built. Pom is an acronym for project object model. Let us take a peek at this file.

How to do it...

Let's understand the pom file, by performing the following steps:

1. Go to a Maven project that we created in previous chapters.

2. Open the file named pom.xml.

How it works...

A pom file is an XML file that is based on a specific schema, as specified at the top of the file:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                      http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">

There is also a modelVersion element that defines the version of this schema:

<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

These are the basic elements of a pom file.

The groupId element is a unique identifier of the organization to which the project belongs. For our sample project...