What is “pom” packaging in maven?

Question

I was given a maven project to compile and get deployed on a tomcat server. I have never used maven before today, but I have been googling quite a bit. It seems like the top

Answer 1

Packaging an artifact as POM means that it has a very simple lifecycle

package -> install -> deploy

http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the-lifecycle.html

This is useful if you are deploying a pom.xml file or a project that doesn't fit with the other packaging types.

We use pom packaging for many of our projects and bind extra phases and goals as appropriate.

For example some of our applications use:

prepare-package -> test -> package -> install -> deploy

When you mvn install the application it should add it to your locally .m2 repository. To publish elsewhere you will need to set up correct distribution management information. You may also need to use the maven builder helper plugin, if artifacts aren't automatically attached to by Maven.