What are the stages of the Maven lifecycle and what happens at each of them?

The Maven lifecycle is a sequence of phases executed to build a project. The main standard lifecycles are: default, clean, site.

The most common is default. Its main phases (in order of execution):

• validate: Checks the correctness of the project structure and necessary dependencies.
• compile: Compiles the project's source code.
• test: Runs tests for the compiled code.
• package: Packages the compiled code into a distributable format (e.g., JAR, WAR).
• verify: Performs checks to validate the package, such as static analysis.
• install: Installs the package into the local Maven repository.
• deploy: Copies the final package to a remote repository.

The clean lifecycle is intended for cleaning the project:

• pre-clean: Performs actions before cleaning.
• clean: Deletes generated files (e.g., the target folder).
• post-clean: Performs actions after cleaning.

The site lifecycle is intended for generating project documentation:

• pre-site: Performs actions before site generation.
• site: Generates documentation.
• post-site: Performs actions after site generation.
• site-deploy: Deploys the generated site.

Running a lifecycle phase with the command mvn [phase] will execute that phase and all preceding phases in the same lifecycle.

For example, mvn install will execute validate, compile, test, package, verify, and install.