How are “mvn clean package” and “mvn clean install” different?

Question

What exactly are the differences between mvn clean package and mvn clean install? When I run both of these commands, they both seem to do the same

Answer 1

What clean does (common in both the commands) - removes all files generated by the previous build

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Coming to the difference between the commands package and install, you first need to understand the lifecycle of a maven project

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These are the default life cycle phases in maven

• validate - validate the project is correct and all necessary information is available
• compile - compile the source code of the project
• test - test the compiled source code using a suitable unit testing framework. These tests should not require the code be packaged or deployed
• package - take the compiled code and package it in its distributable format, such as a JAR.
• verify - run any checks on results of integration tests to ensure quality criteria are met
• install - install the package into the local repository, for use as a dependency in other projects locally
• deploy - done in the build environment, copies the final package to the remote repository for sharing with other developers and projects.

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How Maven works is, if you run a command for any of the lifecycle phases, it executes each default life cycle phase in order, before executing the command itself.

order of execution

validate >> compile >> test (optional) >> package >> verify >> install >> deploy

So when you run the command mvn package, it runs the commands for all lifecycle phases till package

validate >> compile >> test (optional) >> package

And as for mvn install, it runs the commands for all lifecycle phases till install, which includes package as well

validate >> compile >> test (optional) >> package >> verify >> install

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So, effectively what it means is, install commands does everything that package command does and some more (install the package into the local repository, for use as a dependency in other projects locally)

Source: Maven lifecycle reference