Speed-up and secure your Maven builds with Maven Daemon

By Mikael Ståldal

You can speed-up Maven builds considerably by using Maven Daemon.

Here is how I installed it on Ubuntu Linux:

  1. Make sure you have a Java Development Kit installed.

  2. Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to your JDK by creating a file /etc/profile.d/java.sh with this content:

    #!/bin/sh
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-21-openjdk-amd64

  3. Download Maven Daemon.

  4. Unpack it into /opt

  5. Make it available in PATH:

    $ cd /usr/bin
$ sudo ln -s ../../opt/maven-mvnd-1.0.2-linux-amd64/bin/mvnd .
$ sudo ln -s mvnd mvn

You can configure IntelliJ IDEA to use it by setting Maven home path to /opt/maven-mvnd-1.0.2-linux-amd64. You need to do this for all existing Maven projects you have. Also make sure that the registry setting maven.use.scripts is true.

You can secure your Maven builds with AppArmor. Add this file to /etc/apparmor.d:

#include <tunables/global>

profile maven /opt/maven-mvnd-*/{bin/mvnd,mvn/bin/mvn} {
    #include <abstractions/base>
    #include <abstractions/consoles>

    /tmp/ r,
    /tmp/** rwklix,

    @{PROC}/ r,
    @{PROC}/** r,
    @{PROC}/@{pid}/** rwk,

    /opt/maven-mvnd-*/** r,

    /sys/** r,
    /etc/** r,
    /usr/share/** r,
    /bin/** ix,
    /usr/bin/** ix,
    /usr/sbin/ldconfig rix,
    /usr/sbin/ldconfig.real ix,
    /usr/lib/** rix,

    owner @{HOME}/src/** rwkl,
    owner @{HOME}/.java/** rwk,
    owner @{HOME}/.cache/JNA/** rwkm,
    owner @{HOME}/.m2/** rwkl,

    /snap/intellij-idea-ultimate/** r,

    /etc/resolv.conf r,
    @{PROC}/sys/net/** r,
    /run/systemd/resolve/** r,
    network,

    signal (receive) set=(int,term,kill),

    ptrace,
}

Then run sudo service apparmor reload to activate it (it will be loaded automatically on boot). This is tested un Ubuntu desktop 24.04. Some Maven plugins require additional configuration to function properly.