Question

Is there a Maven “phase” or “goal” to simply execute the main method of a Java class? I have a project that I’d like to test manually by simply doing something like “mvn run”.

Answer 1

See the exec maven plugin. You can run Java classes using:

mvn exec:java -Dexec.mainClass="com.example.Main" [-Dexec.args="argument1"] ...

The invocation can be as simple as mvn exec:java if the plugin configuration is in your pom.xml. The plugin site on Mojohaus has a more detailed example.

<project>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>1.2.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <mainClass>com.example.Main</mainClass>
                    <arguments>
                        <argument>argument1</argument>
                    </arguments>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>