Maven is a build automation tool from Apache Software Foundation that is commonly used to handle Java projects. It is a valuable automation tool extensively employed in Java-based projects, such as Selenium, an open-source tool for web application testing. Maven can easily handle the entire lifecycle of a project which can include code generation, compilation, testing, validation, packaging, and much more. It works in phases rather than tasks and makes the build management process much easier.
In Selenium, Maven is used for dependency management, which allows QA to download all the JARs and Dependencies, and manage the lifecycle for a Selenium Java project. This makes it easier for the QA to configure dependencies for Selenium Java by automatically downloading the JARs from the Maven repository. Maven provides a standardized project structure and procedures that minimize complexity, manages dependencies, and generates scripts for automated testing.
Some key reasons to use Maven in Selenium are:
- Provides a uniform system and simplifies the build process
- Increases reusability
- Includes a centralized repository to manage jar files
Maven has a number of “goals” that represent a specific task for building and managing a project. There are a number of goals present in Maven, but three are crucial for Selenium test automation. They are clean, install, and test. Maven Clean is used to clean the target folder. This is where the previous build’s files, libraries, reports, output files, etc., are saved. The command to execute this is ‘mvn -clean’ .
In summary, Maven is a build automation tool that is commonly used in Java-based projects like Selenium. It simplifies the build process, manages dependencies, and generates scripts for automated testing. It is used for dependency management in Selenium, which allows QA to download all the JARs and Dependencies, and manage the lifecycle for a Selenium Java project.
