Effective Maven Interview Questions

10 Highly Useful Maven Interview Questions

Do you have a Maven interview coming up? Here is a list of 10 Maven interview questions to strengthen your preparation.

Apache Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. Based on the concept of a project object model (POM), Maven can manage a project’s build, reporting, and documentation from a central piece of information.

1. What is Maven and why is it used?

While building a software system, a certain set of tasks are followed irrespective of the event methodology used:

  • Gather necessities.
  • Analyze necessities.
  • Design solution.
  • Develop (code) solution.
  • Test solution.
  • Deploy solution.
  • Maintain solution.

These tasks are usually executed in the order they have been listed in. For example, you cannot develop a solution before you analyze the requirements and design it. Some may argue that with Test Driven Development (Book), the test cases are created before the solution is developed. While the claim is true, tests are still executed after the development is done irrespective of when the tests were developed.

While all the thinking should be done by the team, the repetitive steps may be disbursed by the associate assistant. The assistant is aware of the software system development flow and knows the manner in which the items are to be stapled.

For instance, the assistant will produce the supported templates, transfer the required third-party libraries (also referred to as JARs) and their dependencies, build the elements, and create a deployable JAR, WAR, or EAR file. Maven plays the role of this assistant. Maven is quite different from other build tools like hymenopteran (Homepage) and alternative build scripts.

In other words, maven is a project management tool. Maven provides developers a whole build lifecycle framework. It simplifies the process of updating a project’s structure.

2. What aspects or phases can be managed using Maven?

Maven allows developers to manage the following aspects of a project:

  • Build.
  • Documentation.
  • Reporting.
  • Dependencies.
  • SCMs.
  • Releases.
  • Distribution.
  • Mailing list.

3. What is POM? What information does POM contain?

POM stands for Project Object Model. It is the basic unit of work in Maven and is an XML file. It perpetually resides within the base directory of the project as pom.xml. POM contains configuration details and data regarding the project which are used by Maven.
Some of the configuration details contained within POM are:

  • Project dependencies.
  • Plugins.
  • Goals.
  • Build profiles.
  • Project version.
  • Developers.
  • Mailing list.

4. What is a Maven build lifecycle? What are the 3 Build lifecycles in Maven?

A Build Lifecycle is a well-defined sequence of phases that outline the order in which the goals are to be executed. A Phase represents a stage in the lifecycle.

The three build lifecycles are:

  • Clean: Cleans up artifacts created by previous builds.
  • Default (or build): This can be accustomed to build the appliance.
  • Site: Generates site documentation for the project.

5. What is a Maven artifact?

An artifact is an internal JAR file that gets deployed to a Maven repository. A Maven build produces one or more artifacts, e.g., a “source” JAR and a compiled JAR.

Each artifact encompasses a group ID (usually a reversed domain name like com.example.foo), an artifact ID (just a name), and a version string. The 3 unambiguously determine the artifact. A project’s dependencies are specified as artifacts.

Click here for: Official Website of Maven

6. What are the Phases of a Maven build lifecycle?

The phases of a Maven build lifecycle are:

  • Validate: The project is correct and the necessary information is available.
  • Compile: Compile the source code of the project.
  • Test: Test the compiled source code using an appropriate unit testing framework. These tests do not require the code to be deployed or packaged.
  • Package: Take the compiled code and package it into a distributable format like JAR.
  • Integration-test: Process and deploy the package (if necessary) in an environment where the integration tests are run.
  • Verify: Run any test to verify whether the package is valid and meets quality requirements.
  • Install:  The package is installed in the native repository. It may be used as a dependency in other projects.
  • Deploy: Copies the final package to the remote repository for sharing. It is done in an integration or release environment.

7. What is a Maven Repository?

A Maven repository is a location where all of the plugins, libraries, jars, project jars, or any other project related information is stored and can be easily used by Maven.
There are 3 types of Maven repositories:

  • Local repository.
  • Central repository.
  • Remote repository.

Must Read: 25 Effective Software Engineering Interview Questions

8. What is a Maven snapshot?

Maven interview questions are incomplete without one on the snapshot. A snapshot version in Maven is not a real version. It is not released. An equivalent version might get several updates. Usually, exposure dependencies ought to solely exist throughout development and free versions (non-snapshot) do not depend on a snapshot version.

9. What features should a build tool have?

A build tool should:

  1. Have the ability to compile Java code and build jar, war, and ear files for deployment and release.
  2. Versioning and dependency management.
  3. Run the project and report the test results.
  4. Run code quality check with sonar, check style, find bugs, etc.
  5. Allow environment property substitution.
  6. Generate files such as WSDL, AspectJ, and XSL.
  7. Have cross-platform (UNIX/Windows) flexibility and support IDEs like Eclipse, Netbeans, and IntelliJ.
  8. Have proper documentation and support.

What Maven interview questions are you aware of? Any Maven tips and tricks you want to share? Do comment.

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