How to Install Apache Maven on CentOS 7

Apache Maven is a open source software project management and build automation tool, that is based on the conception of a project object model (POM), which is primarily used for deploying Java-based applications, but can also be used on projects written in C#, Ruby and other programming languages.

In this article, I will explain how to install and configure latest version of Apache Maven on a CentOS 7 system (the given instructions also works on RHEL and Fedora distribution).

Prerequisites

• A newly deployed or existing CentOS 7 server instance.
• Java Development Kit (JDK) – Maven 3.3+ require JDK 1.7 or above to execute.

Install OpenJDK 8 in CentOS 7

Java Development Kit (JDK) is a primary requirement to install Apache Maven, so first install Java on CentOS 7 system from the default repository and verify the version using following commands.

# yum install -y java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel
# java -version

If installation went well, you see the following output.

openjdk version "1.8.0_141"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_141-b16)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.141-b16, mixed mode)

Install Apache Maven in CentOS 7

Next, go to the official Apache Maven download page and grab the latest version or use the following wget command to download it under the maven home directory ‘/usr/local/src’.

# cd /usr/local/src
# wget http://www-us.apache.org/dist/maven/maven-3/3.5.4/binaries/apache-maven-3.5.4-bin.tar.gz

Extract the downloaded archive file, and rename it using following commands.

# tar -xf apache-maven-3.5.4-bin.tar.gz
# mv apache-maven-3.5.4/ apache-maven/ 

Configure Apache Maven Environment

Now we need to configure the environments variables to pre-compiled Apache Maven files on our system by creating a configuration file ‘maven.sh’ in the ‘/etc/profile.d’ directory.

# cd /etc/profile.d/
# vim maven.sh

Add the following configuration in ‘maven.sh’ configuration file.

# Apache Maven Environment Variables
# MAVEN_HOME for Maven 1 - M2_HOME for Maven 2
export M2_HOME=/usr/local/src/apache-maven
export PATH=${M2_HOME}/bin:${PATH}

Now make the ‘maven.sh’ configuration file executable and then load the configuration by running the ‘source’ command.

# chmod +x maven.sh
# source /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

Check Apache Maven Version

To verify Apache Maven installation, run the following maven command.

# mvn --version

And you should get a output similar to the following:

Apache Maven 3.5.4 (1edded0938998edf8bf061f1ceb3cfdeccf443fe; 2018-06-17T19:33:14+01:00)
Maven home: /usr/local/src/apache-maven
Java version: 9.0.4, vendor: Oracle Corporation, runtime: /opt/java/jdk-9.0.4
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "linux", version: "4.17.6-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64", arch: "amd64", family: "unix"

That’s It! You have successfully installed Apache Maven 3.5.4 on your CentOS 7 system. If you have any problems related to installation, do share with us in the comment section.