In the tutorial “Setting up Eclipse IDE step by step tutorial” we looked at installing Eclipse IDE, importing an existing Java project folder into eclipse, and creating a Java project within Eclipse. Industrial strength Java applications will be using Eclipse with Maven.

Configure Eclipse to work with Maven

We have already have a modified “settings.xml” file in “c:\tools\apache-maven-3.5.0-bin\apache-maven-3.5.0\conf” as per “Setting up Maven step by step tutorial” – “Configure Maven” section.

Step 1: Let’s configure Eclipse to point to this file via “Window –> Preferences“, and in the pop up console select “Maven –> User Settings“.

Configure Eclipse for Maven build tool

Import an existing Maven project into Eclipse

Let’s import the Maven project that we created in “Create a Maven project” at “Setting up Maven step by step tutorial“.

Step 1: “File –> Import“, and in the pop up console select “Maven –> Existing Maven Projects“.

Select the previously create Maven project, which has a “pom.xml” file in its base folder.

Check the Maven folder structure & the file contents.

Maven Project Structure

Note: Java projects have a little “J” symbol on top of it whereas a Maven based Java projects have both “M” & “J”.

Step 2: You can run the “HelloWorld.java” by right mouse clicking, and then “Run As” –> “Java Application.”

Step 3: You can build the “jar” file within Eclipse by selecting the project “simple-maven-project“, and right mouse click to select “Run As” –> “Maven Install“.

Create a new Maven Project In Eclipse

Step 1: File –> New Project…“, and then in the pop up console select “Maven –> Maven Project“.

Step 2: Select “C\projects” as the location.

Step 3: Select “Quickstart” as the Maven archetype.

Step 4: Assign a Maven “group id” & “artifact id”.

You have a basic Maven project structure to which you can add packages, classes, interfaces, etc. Also, can modify the “pom.xml” file to add more library dependencies & plugins as you see fit. You are now ready to “Create a new Maven Project outside Eclipse & then import into Eclipse

Step 1: From a DOS prompt run:

Step 2: Import “C:\projects\myproject2” as an existing Maven project into Eclipse as shown above.

You are now ready to “Work on the project” within Eclipse.

Upgrade to Java 8 or Later

As you could notice both the Maven projects were Using J2SE 1.5.

Step 1: Select the project “myproject2” within Eclipse and the right mouse click, select “Properties“, which brings up the project properties. Select the “Libraries” tab, and click on “Add Library“.

Step 2: Remove the “J2SE-1.5” library.

Step 3: You must also add the following two lines to the pom.xml file to use Java 8.

The complete “pom.xml” will look like with 4.12 JUnit library:

You can check for the library versions at “http://repo1.maven.apache.org/maven2/” by clicking on the group id “junit”, and then the artifact id “junit”, and finally the version “4.12”. You can see the jar file “junit-4.12.jar“.

Next Java Beginner Tutorial: Setting up GitHub with Eclipse for Maven based Java projects.