If you are just starting to develop with Magnolia CMS, use your IDE to build the project. When you are ready to automate building, we recommended that you use Maven. When initializing Maven you need to enter a Nexus username and password.

Best practices for building:

• Create a new module for each new project.
• Don't build the Magnolia CMS core code. It is unnecessary. Building your own project is enough.
• Build and run an empty project first to test your setup.
• Configure dependencies to other modules whose functionality you wish to use. This saves you from having to recreate that functionality.
• Use the Maven archetype. It is a ready-to-use Maven structure, with a top-level project and a webapp as a Maven sub-module.

Following these practices means that you don't need to "drop a JAR" in the webapp or modify a configuration file in the deployed webapp. In addition, builds that follow these guidelines are reproducible. Commit your code to the source control management system, have builds produced by diverse developers, use a continuous integration server, and do releases predictably.

See also: Don't build Magnolia: build your projects