Maven Installation: Linux

Note: We recommend you use the latest version of Maven, which currently is 3.2.1; you can use other, older versions, but issues may arise that are occurring due to use of an outdated version.

Installation for Ubuntu

On Ubuntu installing Maven is a piece of cake, since Canonical is nice enough to have already put Maven in Ubuntu's apt-repositories by factory default.

Let's get to it. First update your sources, just in case:

sudo apt-get update

Once that's done, install Maven with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install -y maven

If everything has gone well, you should be able to do:

mvn -version

And get a response similar to this:

Apache Maven 3.2.1 (rdebian-4) 
Java version: 1.7.0_55
Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-oracle/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: ANSI_X3.4-1968
OS name: "linux" version: "2.6.32-5-amd64" arch: "amd64" Family: "unix"

If that's the case then congratulations! You've successfully installed Maven 3.2.1.

Installation for Debian

Since poor old Debian hasn't added Maven's latest version to their apt-repositories, we won't be able to do the standard apt-get approach, but instead have to add the repositories manually.

Let's get started on installing maven3. In order to do this you'll most likely have to add a few new lines to your sources.list file. I prefer using nano for all my editing needs, but feel free to use whatever you prefer. For the sake of the tutorial, though, it'd be best to use the same editor, so no confusion arises.

Step 1: Add the sources to your sources.list:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

And add these lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/natecarlson/maven3/ubuntu precise main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/natecarlson/maven3/ubuntu precise main

Now exit nano by pressing Ctrl-X.

Step 2: Update sources and install maven3:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install -y maven3

Step 3: Good! Now all that's left is to add a symbolic link for maven, so lets do that:

ln -s /usr/share/maven3/bin/mvn /usr/bin/mvn

Alright. That's all there is to it! Check that your current Maven installation is working by doing

mvn -version

If your returned version is Maven 3.x.x, you've successfully installed maven3!

Manual Installation for other Linux distributions

Let's get started. Download the latest version of Maven from Apache Maven, or use this command to download it to your current directory: (Note, if you did this make sure to remember what directory you've saved it to!)

wget 'http://tweedo.com/mirror/apache/maven/maven-3/3.2.1/binaries/apache-maven-3.2.1-bin.tar.gz' -O maven3.2.1-bin.tar.gz

Good. Once that's done, continue to unpack the downloaded archive to a directory of your choice. In this case I'll be putting it into

/usr/share/maven3

To do that, execute these commands while in the folder you originally saved that Maven archive to:

sudo mkdir /usr/share/maven3/ && sudo tar -xzf maven3.2.1-bin.tar.gz -C /usr/share/maven3

Once that step has been completed, go on to adding a symbolic link for Maven:

ln -s /usr/share/maven3/apache-maven-3.2.1/bin/mvn /usr/bin/mvn

If everything has gone well, you should be able to execute mvn -version without any errors.

If everything is working, then congratulations! You've successfully installed Maven on linux!