How to Download and Install Apache Maven on Windows

Do you want to download and install the latest version of Apache Maven on Windows?

Then check this out:

In this tutorial, I’ll show where to download Maven.

How to configure it.

(And above all) how to check if everything is working.

So here we go.

Check following posts if you are looking to download and install Maven 3.2.2, Maven 3.2.5, Maven 3.3.9 or Maven 3.5.0.

What is Apache Maven?

Maven is a build automation tool. It addresses two aspects of building software:

• It describes the different steps in the build process.
• It describes the dependencies to other modules and components.

The Maven project is part of the Apache Software Foundation. Which is a decentralized open source community of developers.

Step #1: Check Prerequisites

Maven requires Java to work. So let’s check if you have Java configured on your system.

Click on the search button. Then type “cmd” (without quotes).

If you have Windows 7 click on the Windows button.

Click on the Command Prompt shortcut.

Wait for the command prompt to open.

Type “java -version” and press ENTER.

The above command prints the installed Java version.

For Maven 3 you need Java version 1.7 or higher.

If you do not have Java installed on your system. Check following post which details how to install a JDK on Windows 10.

Step #2: Download

Go to the Maven download page.

Scroll down to the Files section.

Click on the Binary zip archive link.

At the time of writing the latest stable Maven release was version: 3.5.4.

Wait for the download to complete.

Step #3: Install

Open the location of the downloaded installer.

Right-click the ZIP archive file. Select Extract All….

Select an extract destination for the Maven files.

In this example, we extract in C:\Users\Downlinko\tools\maven.

Click on Extract. This extracts all Maven files under C:\Users\Downlinko\tools\maven\apache-maven-3.5.4.

From now on we refer to this location as [MAVEN_INSTALL_DIR].

Step #4: Setup

We need to set up an environment variable that will point to our Maven installation.

Click on the search button. Then type “env”.

If you have Windows 7 click on the Windows button.

Click on the Edit environment variables for your account shortcut.

Wait for the environment variables window to open.

Click on New….

Enter “M2_HOME” as variable name. Enter the [MAVEN_INSTALL_DIR] as variable value.

In this tutorial the installation directory is: C:\Users\Downlinko\tools\maven\apache-maven-3.5.4.

Click OK.

Next, we need to configure the PATH environment variable so we can run Maven from a command prompt.

Select the PATH variable. Click on Edit….

Click on New and type “%M2_HOME%\bin” as shown below.

Click OK.

Click OK once more to close the environment variables window.

On Windows 7 you cannot add extra values for an existing Path variable. You need to append “;%M2_HOME%\bin” at the end of the variable value instead.

Step #5: Test

To test the setup click on the search button. Then type “cmd”.

Click on the Command Prompt shortcut.

Wait for the command prompt to open.

Type “mvn -version” and press ENTER.

The above command prints the installed Maven version.

Congratulations, you have installed Apache Maven on Windows 10!

Now it’s time to create your first Maven project.

Go ahead and leave a comment if you liked this post.

Thanks!