Setting up a simple maven2 project in less than 1 minute

Ever need to create a new maven2 project? Was your next step to copy and paste an existing maven2 project and rename all the directories, package folders, and oh yeah don't forget to remove those SCM (cvs/svn) hidden directories. That's not all, don't forget to update the pom's groupId, artifactId, and everything else under the POM sun.

Using the maven-archetype-plugin you can create simple projects in a matter of seconds. "Archetypes are a simple and useful way to bootstrap new development across your organization, and urge your developers to follow a similar project pattern. Archetypes are a template of a Maven project used to generate skeleton layout for projects of any desired type in a consistent way" (Maven: The Definitive Guide).

The default archetype is quickstart, and generates a simple Java project with some source and a unit test. Here is how you can use the quickstart archetype to create a maven2 project in seconds saving you from the copy/paste world:

mvn archetype:create -DgroupId=com.gestalt.jbi.rss.binding -DartifactId=rss-binding-installer

Thats it! Next you can run mvn clean install and you now have a simple Java project created.

If a simple J2SE project isn't what you need then check out these other 10 archetypes. Most notably are:

1. maven-archetype-archetype - used to create a simple project that can be used to build other archetypes
2. maven-archetype-j2ee-simple - build a simple j2ee project
3. maven-archetype-mojo - in maven2, mojos comprise a maven plugin, so this archetype creates a project that gets you set to build your own maven plugin

Plus there are many many more available in the open source community. For example when working with Apache ServiceMix and maven2, use their maven archetypes to build Service Engines or Binding Components. They also have archetypes to help simplify creating Service Units/Service Assemblies for their various components. Sun also has support for archetypes to create components as well.