Code Better, Build Faster: Writing Maven Plugins With Kotlin

How to write Maven plugins using Kotlin, a modern JVM language, to streamline your build process and extend Maven’s functionality

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Maven is the most popular build tool used for JVM-based projects. It provides a simple and efficient way to manage project dependencies and manage project configurations. Internally, Maven uses Plugins to fulfill various tasks like compiling code, executing unit tests, etc. With a vast array of plugins already available, Maven provides a robust ecosystem that enables developers to streamline the build process.

However, sometimes the available plugins are not sufficient for your specific task. In such cases, you can create your own Maven plugin. I wanted to automatically generate class dependency graphs for one of my projects. As I found no suitable plugin available, I decided to write my own. The result is called dependency-analyzer, and you can find it on or .

In this article, I want to show how you can write your own Maven-Plugins using Kotlin, test those plugins, and use them in your own project. I created a simple example to try this yourself. You can find it on .