Installing Maven 3 from a Binary DEB on Ubuntu

I'm on an automation kick lately. I've had to install Maven on an Ubuntu machine hundreds (if not thousands) of times and I finally decided that it was time to create a custom binary package to solve this problem. I did this because Maven 3 isn't available on Ubuntu, and I'm not going to wait for Debian packaging to repackage everything.

My usual process for installing Maven is:

1. Download the archive from the ASF.
2. Unpack the archive somewhere.
3. Copy the expanded Maven archive to /usr/local.
4. Create a symbolic link /usr/local/maven -> /usr/local/apache-maven-1.1.1
5. Create a file in /etc/profile.d/maven.sh which will set the M2_HOME and PATH variables accordingly.
6. Run Maven, and troubleshoot...

Since this seems like a lot of manual busywork, here's a custom DEB package. To install it, just execute the following commands on Ubuntu 10.04 (or 10.10):

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://build.discursive.com/apt/ lucid main"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install maven

This package depends on the java6-sdk, and by default it will install the OpenJDK 6 JDK. If you want to use the Sun JDK, you will need to add the "http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner" repository. Once the package is installed, log out and log in again. This package just drops Maven into /usr/local/, creates a symbolic link, and then creates a file in /etc/profile.d/maven.sh that sets M2_HOME and PATH.

Here's a video walk-through: