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Maven Tutorial

In this quick article, we’ll explore the standard directory layout of a typical Maven project. Having a common directory layout would allow for users familiar with one Maven project to immediately feel at home in another Maven project. The advantages are analogous to adopting a site-wide look-and-feel.

The next section documents the directory layout expected by Maven and the directory layout created by Maven. Please try to conform to this structure as much as possible; however, if you can't these settings can be overridden via the project descriptor.

Standard Directory Layout

A typical Maven project has a pom.xml file and a directory structure based on defined conventions:

└───maven-project
    ├───pom.xml
    ├───README.txt
    ├───NOTICE.txt
    ├───LICENSE.txt
    └───src
        ├───main
        │   ├───java
        │   ├───resources
        │   ├───filters
        │   └───webapp
        ├───test
        │   ├───java
        │   ├───resources
        │   └───filters
        ├───it
        ├───site
        └───assembly

The Root Directory

This directory serves as the root of every Maven project.

Let’s take a closer look at the standard files and subdirectories that are typically found at root:

maven-project/pom.xml – defines dependencies and modules needed during the build lifecycle of a Maven project
maven-project/LICENSE.txt – licensing information of the project
maven-project/README.txt – summary of the project
maven-project/NOTICE.txt – information about third-party libraries used in the project
maven-project/src/main – contains source code and resources that become part of the artifact
maven-project/src/test – holds all the test code and resources
maven-project/src/it – usually reserved for integration tests used by the Maven Failsafe Plugin
maven-project/src/site – site documentation created using the Maven Site Plugin
maven-project/src/assembly – assembly configuration for packaging binaries

The src/main Directory

As the name indicates, src/main is the most important directory of a Maven project. Anything that is supposed to be part of an artifact, be it a jar or war, should be present here.

Its subdirectories are:

src/main/java – Java source code for the artifact
src/main/resources – configuration files and others such as i18n files, per-environment configuration files, and XML configurations
src/main/webapp – for web applications, contains resources like JavaScript, CSS, HTML files, view templates, and images
src/main/filters – contains files that inject values into configuration properties in the resources folder during the build phase

The src/test Directory

The directory src/test is the place where tests of each component in the application reside.

Note that none of these directories or files will become part of the artifact. Let’s see its subdirectories:

src/test/java – Java source code for tests
src/test/resources – configuration files and others used by configuration properties in the resources folder during the test phase

Summary

`src/main/java`	Application/Library sources
`src/main/resources`	Application/Library resources
`src/main/filters`	Resource filter files
`src/main/webapp`	Web application sources
`src/test/java`	Test sources
`src/test/resources`	Test resources
`src/test/filters`	Test resource filter files
`src/it`	Integration Tests (primarily for plugins)
`src/assembly`	Assembly descriptors
`src/site`	Site
`LICENSE.txt`	Project's license
`NOTICE.txt`	Notices and attributions required by libraries that the project depends on
`README.txt`	Project's readme