Book Review: Mastering Apache Maven 3

When I got my hands on Mastering Apache Maven 3  by Prabath Siriwardena, I was sceptical at first, thinking it would be another half-cooked product trying to make up for lack of information with funny stories.

I am glad I can say that's not this case at all. The book is very good and covers all aspects of Maven in satisfactory level. Any developer who wants to us Maven efficiently will probably benefit from reading it and it useful also as comprehensive Maven reference.  Yes, as a natural nit-picker I found some things missing but it the number of such things was surprisingly  low.

What is even better it goes directly to the point, not wasting paper and my time on funny stories, jokes, or other filler stuff.


You will find in it description of POM (Project Object Model), various Maven configuration options, life cycle, description of several the most popular plug-ins, assemblies, archetypes, and repository management.  The final chapter about the best practices would have saved from some pain in past if I had it.

I will definitively find it place in my bookcase.

Book Review: Apache Maven 3 Cookbook

I have decided to review new book about Maven from Packt Publishing: Apache Maven 3 Cookbook by Srirangan promising on its cover "Quick anwers to common problems".

The book is divided to nine chapters:

1. basics
   Maven installation and environment settings. Generating, compiling and testing simple project. POM structure, build lifecycle and profiles.
2. software engineering techniques
   Modularization, dependency management, static code analysis, JUnit, Selenium.
3. agile team collaboration
   Nexus, Hudson, version control, offline mode.
4. reporting and documentation
   Mvn site, javadocs, test and code quality reports, dahsboard.
5. Java development
   Building and running web application (jetty), JEE, Spring, Hibernate, Seam.
6. Google development
   Android, GWT, App Engine.
7. Scala, Groovy and Flex
8. IDE integration
   Eclipse, NetBeans, Intellij IDEA
9. extending Maven
   plugin development basics

The book is certainly not material for beginners. Some terms are used without former definition or even explaining. Experienced Maven users will already know or will be able to find the missing pieces but beginners must be terribly confused. I think providing at least a description of Maven's standard directory layout for project or repository would be beneficial.

It is not so much about Maven as I expected, and says nothing about what is new in Maven 3. It should be exhaustive at least in the purely Maven parts, but even there is not enough information to make me happy. I would expect a description of template languages in the part dedicated to site plugin.

If you like puzzles and do not mind to use internet to search for missing pieces or you just cannot recall some setting covered in the book, you will like the book. It can also be used as a good starting point to show what tools, frameworks or languages can be used from/with Maven - do you like Maven and wanted to try GWT or Scala ? The book helps to lower entrance barrier by providing examples how to get working "playground" project in no time.

Would I buy it ? No. My bookcase has limited capacity and since the necessity to use internet to fill the gaps or correct bugs (although not many) in the book, I will be better with the online sources only.