The Maven Integration for Eclipse provides a number of m2e connectors that configure our Maven Java EE projects in the Web Tools Project (WTP) environment. These integration features add the needed project facets to WAR, EJB, and EAR projects. Finally, the m2e plugin supports us in converting Eclipse WTP projects to Maven Java EE projects.

Ultimately, a Maven Java EE project can be treated as an Eclipse WTP project and can be deployed and debugged locally in the Eclipse IDE. All we have to do is click on the Add and Remove… menu item of any server defined in the workspace, and add the desired project to the server, as shown in the following screenshot:

Adding Maven projects to an application server

The consequence of this operation is that the moved resources will be deployed on the selected application server. This happens immediately if the server is running; otherwise, it will happen when the server is started.