What is the role of Maven in DevOps?

Around the globe in 2023, over 7000 enterprises are currently  using Apache Maven as a build-automated tool. 

• Organizations using Maven for build-automation are majorly from the USA States with 2684 customers, i.e., around 36.45% of customers are from the United States. 
• Other top nations using Apache Maven are the United Kingdom and India, with 414(5.62%) and 487(6.61%) customers, respectively.
•  The three top industries that use Maven for Build Automation are Big Data (253), Software Development (311), and Machine Learning (207).

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Maven has an enormous community of users contributing to enhancements, communicating use cases, reporting defects, writing documentation, and aiding customers needing assistance. In the case of numerous development teams’ environments, Maven can set up and fit the way to function as per standards in the shortest time. 

What is Maven?

In the Yiddish language, Maven means “collector/ accumulator of knowledge.” It was initially launched on 13 July 2004.

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Maven is one of the popular open-source build tools developed by the Apache Group for building, publishing, and deploying multiple projects for perfect project management. Maven provides software developers build & document the SDLC framework. It is mainly written in Java and is used to build projects written in Scala, C#, Python, Ruby, etc. 

Based on the POM (Project Object Model), this tool has made the lives of Java developers stress-free while developing reports, scrutinizing builds, and testing automation set-ups. 

Maven in DevOps emphasizes the standardization and simplification of the building procedure, taking care of the following:

• Builds
• Dependencies
• Documentation
• SCMs
• Distribution
• Mailing list
• Reports 
• Releases

The Need for Maven

Maven helps developers manage Java-based apps through projects that organize and handle code files & build scripts to execute and run compiler tools, version no. for compiled code, plus dependency management that allows one project to reference a version of other projects.

• Build a project using Maven.
• Accumulation and collection of Source Code
• Running Tests (functional tests and unit tests)
• Upload the packages to remote repos (Artifactory, Nexus)
• Packaging the outcomes into WAR’s, JAR’s, RPM’s, etc.

• Using Maven you can add jars & other dependencies of the project effortlessly.
• Maven gives project information (dependency list, unit test reports, log document, etc.)
• Using Maven we can simply integrate our project with a source control system (like Git or Subversion).

Maven Architecture

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In the above figure, these are the many components of Maven architecture. This is the local machine’s local repository that you function on. This is the central repository and this is the remote web server or the remote repository, so when you specify any dependency in the palm.XML file of Maven. Maven will seek the file in the central repository. If the dependence exists in the central repository Maven will copy that dependence onto your local machine, however, if it isn’t present here Maven will get it from the remote repository via the internet, so the internet is mandatory for making use of Maven this is how Maven architecture functions. 

The Maven build follows a particular life cycle to deploy & distribute the target project.

There are three build life cycles::

• default: the main life cycle as it is responsible for project delivery
• clean: to clean the project & remove all files made by the previous build
• site: to generate the project’s website documentation

Key Features of Maven

Maven is loaded with several useful  traits, which goes a long mode towards explaining its popularity. Here are a few of Maven’s notable features:

• Easy project setup that follows best practices.
• Simple mode to build projects in which pointless details are hidden.
• Dependency management counting automatic updating.
• Dynamic downloading of crucial Java plug-ins and libraries from Maven repositories.
• Coherent website of project data − Using the same metadata under the build procedure, Maven can make a site and a PDF counting complete documentation.
• Model-based builds − Maven can build any no. of projects into predefined productivity types such as war, jar, and metadata. 
• Parallel builds − It examines the project dependency graph and allows you to build schedule modules in parallel. 
• Backward Compatibility – You can effortlessly port the numerous modules of a project into Maven 3 from old Maven versions. 

How can Maven benefit DevOps?

Maven aids the developer in generating a Java-based project more simply. Accessibility of fresh features generated or added in Maven can be simply added to a project in Maven configuration. 

It enhances the project performance and building procedure. The core feature of Maven is that it can automatically download the project dependency libraries. 

Below are the instances of popular IDEs supporting development with Maven Framework:

• NetBeans
• Eclipse
• MyEclipse
• JBuilder
• IntelliJ IDEA

Processes that can be managed using Maven:

• Building
• Documenting
• Reporting
• Dependencies
• SCMs
• Launches
• Distribution
• Mailing list

Conclusion

Maven enjoyed a 26.88 percent market share in the year 2020, clearly overtaking its closest competitor, Resolve, which came in at 19.78 percent. According to a similar report, Maven is being used in over 4,000 websites, whilst approx. 3,000 sites employ Resolve. 

• the use of Maven in DevOps is that it can handle a project’s build, reports, and documentation from a vital piece of information.
• The parts that are managed by the Maven tool in DevOps are builds, documentation, SCMs, distribution, releases, mailing lists, reporting, and dependencies.

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