How to install Maven on Windows, Linux, Mac

1. Overview

Simply put, Maven is a command-line tool for building Java applications.

The Maven project provides a simple ZIP file containing a precompiled version of Maven for your convenience. There is no installer. It’s up to you to set up your prerequisites and environment to run Maven.

The installation of Apache Maven is a simple process of extracting the archive and adding the bin folder with the mvn command to the PATH.

1.1. Prerequisites

Maven is written in Java (and primarily used for building JVM programs). Thus, the major prerequisite is the Java JDK. You need to install the Java JDK (e.g. from Oracle’s download site), and you should install it to a pathname without spaces.

Once Java is installed, you must ensure that the commands from the Java JDK are in your PATH environment variable. Running, for example:

java -version

must display the right version number.

Further reading:

Apache Maven Tutorial

A quick and practical guide to building and managing Java projects using Apache Maven.

Read more →

Maven Dependency Scopes

A quick and practical guide to dependency scopes in Maven.

Read more →

How to Create an Executable JAR with Maven

A quick and practical guide to creating executable JARs with Maven

Read more →

2. Installing Maven on Windows

To install Maven on windows, head over to Apache Maven site to download the latest version, select the Maven zip file, for example apache-maven-3.3.9-bin.zip.

Unzip it to the folder you want Maven to live.

2.1. Adding Maven to the Environment Path

Add both M2_HOME and MAVEN_HOME variables to the Windows environment using system properties, and point it to your Maven folder.

Update the PATH variable by appending the Maven bin folder – %M2_HOME%\bin, so that you can run the Maven’s command everywhere.

To verify it run:

mvn -version

in the command prompt. It should display the Maven version, the java version, and the operating system information. That’s it, you have set up Maven on your Windows system.

3. Installing Maven on Linux

To install Maven on the Linux operating system, download the latest version from the Apache Maven site, select the Maven binary tar.gz file, for example: apache-maven-3.3.9-bin.tar.gz.

Extract the archive to your desired location.

3.1. Adding Maven to the Environment Path

Open the command terminal and run the following commands to set the environment variables:

$ export M2_HOME=/usr/local/apache-maven/apache-maven-3.3.9

$ export M2=$M2_HOME/bin

$ export MAVEN_OPTS=-Xms256m -Xmx512m

with M2_Home path corresponding with the location of your extracted Maven files.

Now append the M2 variable to the system path:

$ export PATH=$M2:$PATH

Finally, verify if Maven has been added by running:

$ mvn -version

The output should be as follows:

Apache Maven 3.3.3 (7994120775791599e205a5524ec3e0dfe41d4a06; 2016-12-03T17:27:37+05:30)
Maven home: /usr/local/apache-maven/apache-maven-3.3.9

Java version: 1.8.0_75, vendor: Oracle Corporation

Java home: /usr/local/java-current/jdk1.8.0_75/jre

You have successfully installed Maven on your Linux system.

3.2. Installing Maven on Ubuntu

In a terminal, run apt-cache search maven, to get all the available Maven packages:

$ apt-cache search maven
....
libxmlbeans-maven-plugin-java-doc - Documentation for Maven XMLBeans Plugin
maven - Java software project management and comprehension tool
maven-debian-helper - Helper tools for building Debian packages with Maven
maven2 - Java software project management and comprehension tool

The Maven package always comes with latest Apache Maven.

Run command sudo apt-get install maven, to install the latest Apache Maven.

$ sudo apt-get install maven

This will take a few minutes to download. Once downloaded you can verify by running the mvn -version to verify your installation.

4. Installing Maven on Mac OS X

To install Maven on Mac OS X operating system, download the latest version from the Apache Maven site, select the Maven binary tar.gz file, for example: apache-maven-3.3.9-bin.tar.gz.

Extract the archive to your desired location.

4.1. Adding Maven to the Environment Path

Open the terminal and switch to the directory where the files were extracted to and then login as Super – User.

Remove the tar.gz archive:

rm Downloads/apache-maven*bin.tar.gz

Fix the permissions:

chown -R root:wheel Downloads/apache-maven*

Switch the Maven contents:

mv Downloads/apache-maven* /opt/apache-maven

Archive the Admin session:

exit

Add Maven binaries to the path and append.

nano $HOME/.profile

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/apache-maven/bin

Ctrl+x to Save and Exit from “nano”.

To load the new set up run:

bash

To test the new installation run:

mvn -version

You are now ready to use Maven on your Mac OS X.

4.2. HighSierra Compatibility

For HighSierra users, we’ll need to additionally add Maven binaries to the path and append.

nano $HOME/.bashrc
export }}{{PATH=$PATH:/opt/apache-maven/bin

Ctrl+x to save and exit from “nano”.

To load the new set up run: bash

5. Conclusion

This quick guide illustrated how to install Maven on the major operating systems for development.

To learn how to get started with Spring with Maven – check out the tutorial here.

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