The Maven 2 DEB Plugin can be used to produce a Debian package from any project that can be packaged as a JAR. Debian packages can be used on most Debian-based Linux Disributions including Ubuntu and Knoppix. Please note that the "deb" goal is only relevant to projects with:

<packaging>jar</packaging>

Standard Format for Java Libraries

Debian maintains a few common Java libraries from very widely used projects such as the Jakarta Commons. You can take a look at the contents of the current (unstable) libcommons-lang-java 2.1:

usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/ArrayUtils.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/BitField.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/BooleanUtils.html
<snip/>
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/time/DurationFormatUtils.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/time/FastDateFormat.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/time/StopWatch.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/time/classes.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/time/package-summary.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/time/tree.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/org/apache/commons/lang/tree.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/overview-summary.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/package-list        
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/resources/gjdoc.js  
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/resources/gjdochtml-clean-color1.css
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/resources/gjdochtml-clean-layout.css
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/resources/inherit.png
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/resources/xhtml11-target10.dtd
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/serialized-form.html
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/api/tree.html           
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/changelog.Debian.gz     
usr/share/doc/libcommons-lang-java/copyright               
usr/share/java/commons-lang-2.1.jar                        
usr/share/java/commons-lang.jar

Looking at the package contents, you will notice that this Debian package contains two things: a JAR and some JavaDoc. By default, this Maven DEB plugin will generate a DEB file which puts the JAR artifact in /usr/share/java/$project.groupId/$project.artifactId-$project.version.jar. You can override this setting if you want to put your JAR files in a different locations (libTargetDirectory). You will also notice that this commons-lang DEB contains JavaDoc. The Maven DEB plugin has the ability to package JavaDoc with your projects DEB file, but to do this, you will need to add some simple configuration to your pom.xml to bind javadoc:javadoc to the package stage in your project's lifecycle. The following document will show you how to configure Maven 2 to produce DEB packages to this standard format

Creating DEB Packages using Maven 2

Creating a standard Debian package from your project without customized dependencies or JavaDoc is as simple as adding the following XML to your project's pom.xml:

  <build>
    <groupId>org.test</groupId>
    <artifactId>some-lib</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
        <artifactId>deb-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <description>A test project</description>
              <maintainer>Tim OBrien &lt;tobrien@discursive.com&gt;</maintainer>
              <section>libs</section>
              <priority>optional</priority>     
              <architecture>all</architecture>
        </configuration>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <goals>
              <goal>deb</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
  </build>

This plugin declaration will associate the deb-maven-plugin with your project, and the "deb" goal will be automatically associated with the "package" phase of your project's lifecycle. Running "mvn package" will product the file "org.test-some-lib-1.0-1.deb" in $basedir/target. You can see the contents of this file by running "dpkg -c target/org.test-some-lib-1.0-1.deb". This file will contain:

drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2007-02-06 17:34 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2007-02-06 17:34 ./usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2007-02-06 17:34 ./usr/share/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2007-02-06 17:34 ./usr/share/java/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2007-02-06 17:34 ./usr/share/java/org.test/
-rw-r--r-- root/root      2224 2007-02-06 17:34 ./usr/share/java/org.test/test-1.0.jar

And, the control file will be populated with the configuration you passed to the deb-maven-plugin. To see the results of the control file, run "dpkg -I target/org.test-some-lib-1.0-1.deb", you should see:

 new debian package, version 2.0.
 size 2270 bytes: control archive= 283 bytes.
     192 bytes,     8 lines      control              
 Section: libs
 Priority: optional
 Maintainer: Tim OBrien <tobrien@discursive.com>
 Package: test-test
 Version: 1.0-1
 Architecture: all
 Depends: log4j-log4j (=1.2.13)
 Description: A test project

Generating a Debian Package with JavaDoc

If you want to generate a Debian package with JavaDoc, include the following XML in your project's pom.xml:

    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
          <executions>
            <execution>
              <phase>package</phase>
              <goals>
                <goal>javadoc</goal>
              </goals>
            </execution>
          </executions>
    </plugin>

This will run Javadoc generation during the package phase. Creating Javadoc at $basedir/target/site/apidocs (Unsure whether this needs to go before the plugin declaration for deb-maven-plugin.) To be safe, put this at the beginning of the plugin definitions.