Lifecycle Plugins

There are a number of phases/goals for each lifecycle

Lifecycle	Phase/Goals	Notes
CLEAN	Clean	This plugin as only one goal which clean, it removes all files generated by the build process, basically it removes the /target directory
DEFAULT
	compiler:compile compiler:testCompiler compiler:help	default language levels for both source and target are 1.6, uses the javax.tools.JavaCompiler but can be configured to use Javac
	resources:resources resources:Resources resources:copy-resources	copy project resources to output directory, can be configured for encoding, source and target directories, has lots of options for copying files during build process
	surefire:test	used to execute unit tests of the project, supports JUnit 3/4/5 and TestNG, includes classes names Test*.java, *Test.java, *Tests.java and *TestCase.java
	jar:jar jar:test-jar	is used to build jars from compiled classes and project resources, you can configure custom manifests to make execute jars
	deploy:deploy deploy:deploy-file	used to deploy projects to remote Maven repositories, configuration is done in the pom.xml file
SITE
	site:site	generate web documentation for project
	site:deploy	deploy the site via Wagon
	site:run	run the site locally using Jetty as a web server
	site:stage	generate site to local staging directory
	site:stage-deploy	deploy site to remote staging location
	site:attach-descriptor	adds site.xml to files for deployment, this file is used by search engines
	site:jar	creates a jar file for deployment to a repository
	site:effective-site	generates the site.xml file

Common Plugins

This section I am going to give some tips on some of the lifecycles, phases or goals, I will add to this section when I pick additional knowledge

When hooking into plugins via the pom.xml file you add to the build -> plugins properties, you can see an example of this in the clean tips below, different plugins have options which I point you to the documentation.

The other point I wish to make is that you can run the plugins (or lifecycles) directly from the commandline or via IDE, you can see this in intellij below

You can hook into the Clean phase using the below, in the below example I hook into the Clean initialize phase and basically use the same goal but you are able to add additional options here if you wish to do so.

The version property basically controls what Java compiler version will be used

If you are using something like intellij then make sure the supported language is correct otherwise you will get not support version issues

The resources plugin copies the resouces directory into the target/classes directory (or into a JAR file, etc), a template of this is below just add your own directory and files

The JAR plugin creates a JAR file from the compiled class files however there are some options for example you create a manifest file or add entries to the manifest file.

The Site plugin creates a website for you to view the documenation for your project, you have some options for eample you can add additional languages, if you look at the screenshot on the right you can see that the website is created in the target directory, the website uses very basic HTML.

There are many other plugin and it depends on the version here is a list for version 3.6.0 plugins, but you might want to check your version especially if its a newer ersion as there might be more plugins available