A Maven build lifecycle consists of a set of well-defined phases. Each phase groups a set of goals defined by Maven plugins and the lifecycle defines the order of execution. A Maven plugin is a collection of goals where each goal is responsible for performing a specific action. We'll be discussing Maven plugins in detail in Chapter 5, Maven Plugins.
In this chapter, the following topics will be covered:
Standard lifecycles in Maven
Lifecycle bindings
Building custom lifecycles and lifecycle extensions
The following figure shows the relationship between Maven plugin goals and lifecycle phases:
Let's take the simplest Maven build command that every Java developer is familiar with:
$ mvn clean install
What will this do? As a developer, how many times have you executed the previous command? Have you ever thought of what happens inside? If not, it's time to explore it now.