Performance Optimization

About

The Performance Optimization category in Maven includes plugins that focus on:

• Reducing build time

• Improving build efficiency

• Minimizing redundant computation

• Managing resource usage

• Leveraging parallelism and incremental builds

These plugins are especially useful in large projects, CI/CD pipelines, or multi-module builds where performance bottlenecks can lead to wasted time and compute resources.

Why Optimize Maven Performance?

• Faster feedback loops during development

• Reduced CI/CD pipeline durations

• Scalability with large codebases or teams

• Avoid rebuilding unchanged modules

• Efficient use of CPU/memory resources

build-cache-extension

A newer concept (inspired by Gradle), the Maven Build Cache Extension avoids re-execution of goals if the inputs haven't changed.

Still evolving but powerful when integrated with remote cache solutions.

Setup

mvn -Dmaven.build.cache.enabled=true clean install

Use Cases

• Speeds up repeated builds

• Share cache across developers or CI environments

takari-lifecycle-plugin

From Takari (by the creators of Maven), this plugin offers improved incremental build behavior over default Maven.

Not part of core Maven but a major attempt to modernize build performance.

Features

• Incremental build awareness

• File-level change detection

• Parallel-safe plugin execution

maven-parallel-plugin

Enables parallel execution of Maven goals across modules or lifecycle phases to speed up the build process.

Syntax Example

mvn -T 4 clean install

-T 4 = Use 4 threads for parallel execution

Options

• -T 1C (one thread per CPU core)

• -T 2.0C (2 threads per core)

Best For

• Multi-module projects

• Heavy builds

maven-dependency-plugin

While primarily a dependency-related plugin, it helps optimize performance by removing unnecessary or conflicting dependencies that increase classpath resolution time.

Helpful Goals

• analyze: Detects unused and undeclared dependencies

• analyze-duplicate: Detects duplicate dependencies

maven-antrun-plugin

Executes custom tasks to pre-process or post-process during builds. While not directly for performance, it can be used to reduce work done in later phases (e.g., cleaning temporary files or skipping steps conditionally).

incremental-build-plugin

Used to identify and build only changed modules in a multi-module Maven build.

Not part of Apache Maven but available in open source tools (like Netflix Nebula, Spotify, etc.)

maven-clean-plugin

While often used for cleanup, it can be optimized to avoid unnecessary deletes of unchanged outputs, especially in custom workflows or large builds.