Apache Maven install "'mvn' not recognized as an internal or external command" after setting OS environmental variables?

Question

I've followed the official installation instructions here for Windows XP. But sometimes when I execute mvn --version, I receive the error message,

'mvn' not recognized as an internal or external command

I've even rebooted my machine a couple times, but the OS does not always recognize the maven command. But when I execute either, cd %M2_HOME%, or cd %M2% it brings me to the installation directory. I've also made sure to add the user variable M2 to the Path system variable.

So, what gives?

I had same problem, but making M2 "system variable" instead of "user variable" solved it — Pshemo, Aug 09 '12 at 19:01
@Pshemo, If you make your comment an answer, I will accept it. Your suggestion worked, thanks! :D Perhaps someone should let Apache know that...i would imagine a lot of people get initially tripped up with that. — mre, Aug 09 '12 at 19:05
I was facing the same issue. But it got resolved after changing the System variable name from "M2_HOME" to "MAVEN_HOME" — Gunjan Shah, Jul 28 '15 at 07:35
Make sure you don't have any syntax errors in the "Path" variable. In my case I had an extra " before my M2_HOME, I removed it and it worked. — Ronny Shibley, Aug 02 '15 at 11:45
Make sure you download the "Binary tar.gz" version. I had the same issue and realized I downloaded the wrong one. — Jacob Malachowski, Mar 05 '15 at 22:19

Pshemo · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-18T20:29:25.727

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Way around would be moving M2 from user variables to system variables

edited Jul 18 '13 at 20:29

answered Aug 09 '12 at 19:06

Pshemo

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It's not a matter of the user vs. system variables. I personally only use user variables in a work context. – Michael Aug 10 '12 at 04:41
@TehHippo True, my answer is not explaining problem but only showing way around it (thats why I posted it as comment first). But I am very interested in how it works for you with user variables. Maybe it is a matter of OS. I am using Win7 64bit ult. What OS are you using? – Pshemo Aug 10 '12 at 09:46
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Same here :) Have no problem configuring environment variables under my own account and being able to run Maven. I feel it's cleaner too, because others may use this PC and they don't need my Maven settings. They might also have their own one. – Michael Aug 12 '12 at 22:44
in my case I also had to move M2_HOME to system variables as a workaround. I am on Windows 7 Pro sp1 64 bit – eddy ed Nov 14 '13 at 12:09
As @eddyed said, I'm on Win 8 64bit and had to move both M2 and M2_HOME to system variables to get it to work. – llanato Oct 22 '14 at 08:06
It worked for me after movie M2 from user vraible to system variable – prashant thakre Sep 23 '16 at 11:49

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 09 '12 at 19:05

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Looks like maven is not present in your PATH. Add the absolute maven home\bin location to your PATH.

answered Aug 09 '12 at 19:05

Reimeus

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As I said above, "*I've also made sure to add the user variable `M2` to the `Path` system variable*" – mre Aug 09 '12 at 19:06
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I had this problem too, but added the absolute path instead of M2 and it worked no problem. – Reimeus Aug 09 '12 at 19:09
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I don't think "user variables" can be added to system variables. The latter would be set first. For example, what if a different user logs in - what would PATH=...%M2%/bin resolve to for them if `M2` is only defined for you? – matt b Aug 09 '12 at 19:18
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No problem, not using any variables in PATH itself. – Reimeus Aug 09 '12 at 19:22

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 13 '14 at 16:05

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I had this same problem, restart the command prompt and then check try mvn --version. It was probably set and working the whole time but command prompt needed to be restarted to be able to access the new system variable.

answered Mar 13 '14 at 16:05

wondergoat77

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score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 15 '15 at 05:04

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Download apache-maven-3.3.9-bin.zip file and extract it.
Then set system variable M2_HOME = B:\sql software\apache-maven-3.3.9 or as appropriate
Also set variable M2 = %M2_HOME%\bin
Open CMD and write mvn

I solved thank you

edited Dec 15 '15 at 05:04

nevster

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answered Dec 15 '15 at 04:52

Deep Shah

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score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 22 '16 at 09:56

Just adding some more info that solved the problem for me:

Make sure that the %M2% and %M2_HOME% variables doesn't have the semicolon (;) at the end. This should only be used if there are more than one location in that path, which is not the case;
Also, make sure that in the "Path" variable, there aren't any spaces between the various paths, separated by the semicolon.

Thanks to Pawan Valecha and Abhijeet Sawant for the tips.

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 15 '14 at 14:25

Heres what i did wrong:

1) make sure its NOT in a [C:\Program Files (x86)] it should be in [C:\Program Files] i am not 100% if that could break it but you never know.

2) There were 3 things i needed to do in my Environment Variables to get it to work

Create a user var like this [ M2 = %M2_HOME% ]
Create a user var like this [M2_HOME = C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\apache-maven-3.2.2]
Edit the PATH to [What ever is already in here +];%M2%

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 11 '17 at 07:26

2

same problem.

and I solved it by:

add C:\Program Files\apache-maven-3.3.9\bin; to PATH
run cmd as administrator

and then mvn --version works.

answered Feb 11 '17 at 07:26

Kadice

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 10 '12 at 04:40

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Maven should be configured in the following way (can be user variables or system): - M2: %M2_HOME%\bin - M2_HOME: (your directory to Maven's root, not \bin) - PATH: %PATH%;%M2%

You should then be able to run mvn from the command prompt.

answered Aug 10 '12 at 04:40

Michael

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score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 23 '13 at 10:43

I've suffered from this problem and found that, for some reason or other, environment variables were simply not being parsed (executing cd %M2% told me that there was no folder %M2% in the current directory). In the end adding the explicit path to Maven's executable worked for me:

C:\apache-maven-3.1.0\bin

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 06 '15 at 09:46

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You need to set M2 and M2_HOME. I was facing same problem and issue was I had put one extra space in PATH variable after semicolon. Just removed space from path and it worked. (Windows 7 machine)

answered Oct 06 '15 at 09:46

Abhijeet Sawant

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score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Mar 07 '16 at 20:31

Installtion Steps

Download Binary zip archive or tar.gz.
Copy in the respective folder. Example - C:\apache-maven-3.3.9
Add Variable (either user or system) M2_HOME = C:\apache-maven-3.3.9
Add Variable (either user or system) MAVEN_HOME = C:\apache-maven-3.3.9
Update Variable PATH with C:\apache-maven-3.3.9\bin
Open CMD and Type mvn -v or mvn --version it should give the below response

C:\Users\XXXXXXX>mvn --version Apache Maven 3.3.9 (bb52d8502b132ec0a5a3f4c09453c07478323dc5; 2015-11-10T22:11:4 7+05:30) Maven home: C:\apache-maven-3.3.9 Java version: 1.8.0_40, vendor: Oracle Corporation Java home: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_40\jre Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: Cp1252 OS name: "windows 8", version: "6.2", arch: "amd64", family: "dos"

**Make sure all variables have correct values using echo %M2_HOME% on CMD

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Aug 24 '16 at 03:11

I solved this by creating all under user variables (including the PATH variable). This is because the system variables do not "translate" the user variables. So if you only want to use maven in your account, you need to add another PATH variable as a user variable, not system variable.

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Feb 22 '13 at 18:32

As others have done, creating new System variables M2 and M2_HOME solved the problem. Just making User variables M2 and M2_HOME on my Windows XP machine led to maven not being recognised from the command line. I then deleted the User variables, created copies as System variables and it all came to life.

This was apache-maven-3.0.4 with XP sp3. So the instructions in: http://maven.apache.org/download.cgi seem incorrect.

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Aug 07 '13 at 17:22

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Running command prompt as Administrator solved the problem for me. I did not have to move M2 or M2_HOME under system variables.

answered Aug 07 '13 at 17:22

Howard Lee

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score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Nov 14 '13 at 11:06

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Most probably you may have not installed maven correctly. use this to download maven. Download the latest (Binary tar.gz) file.It worked for me.

answered Nov 14 '13 at 11:06

prime

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score 0 · Answer 16 · edited Jan 08 '14 at 17:27

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I had the same issue, there was no issue in my syntax, but when I moved the M2, M2_HOME, JAVA_HOME environment variables from user to system it started working. Path variables stayed the same.

edited Jan 08 '14 at 17:27

kukido

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answered Jan 08 '14 at 16:50

Brian

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score 0 · Answer 17 · edited Apr 16 '14 at 05:55

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Add your Maven bin path to the System variable as given below

Go to the

> Enviornment Variables > set Path=D:\apache-maven-3.2.1\bin

or if path is already set than append the path with ";"

restart command and try

edited Apr 16 '14 at 05:55

Engineer

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answered Apr 16 '14 at 05:16

Pawan Valecha

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score 0 · Answer 18 · edited Jun 22 '14 at 07:36

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running maven to win 7

unzip apache-maven to directory C:\Program Files\apache-maven-3.2.1
go to [Enviroment Variables] set [path] C:\Program Files\apache-maven-3.2.1\bin;
open cmd and type C:\Program Files\apache-maven-3.2.1> mvn -version

edited Jun 22 '14 at 07:36

khagler

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answered Jun 22 '14 at 07:08

BehroOoz

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score 0 · Answer 19 · answered Aug 11 '14 at 15:08

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I had similar issue on Windows 7. At first I setup M2, M2_HOME under User variable but when I echoed %PATH% , I did not see maven bin directory listed under PATH. Then I setup M2, M2_HOME under system variable and it worked.

answered Aug 11 '14 at 15:08

Mithun

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score 0 · Answer 20 · answered Sep 02 '14 at 16:07

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Delete M2 and M2_HOME from user variables and move to system variables. That will solve the problem

answered Sep 02 '14 at 16:07

sneha damle

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score 0 · Answer 21 · answered Sep 06 '14 at 19:46

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Had the same problem,

mvn --version

worked but

maven --version

did not. I prefer using 'mvn' over 'maven' anyway so all is well. I also logout/login in to be sure.

answered Sep 06 '14 at 19:46

Loran

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score 0 · Answer 22 · answered Mar 25 '15 at 12:21

Make sure that you haven't renamed some folder which falls in the path of the M2 environment variable. In case you have, then change your M2 and/or M2_HOME accordingly.

It doesn't matter whether M2 or M2_HOME are System Variable or User Variables as long as you are logged in with the same user under whose scope the environment variables are.

score 0 · Answer 23 · edited Dec 27 '15 at 07:44

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I have got it solved by adding Path variable in user variables as %JAVA_HOME%\bin;%M2_HOME%\bin;

edited Dec 27 '15 at 07:44

Ehsan Khodarahmi

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answered Dec 27 '15 at 05:00

Rams

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score 0 · Answer 24 · answered Apr 19 '16 at 11:12

The accepted answer didn't help but simple step below fix it !

Under system PATH: instead of using M2%, use %M2_HOME%\bin, as simple as that.

N.B my %M2_HOME% is pointing to %MV3_HOME% instead of actual absolute path bcos I have multiple version of maven installed and trying to be clever (switch between maven versions on the same box for different project).

score 0 · Answer 25 · answered Oct 19 '16 at 11:08

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A temporary work around would be to set the path from the terminal itself. Worked for me after that. Running as administrator also works. Both M2 and M2_HOME are already set as system variables in my case.

answered Oct 19 '16 at 11:08

Dinu94

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score 0 · Answer 26 · answered Jul 11 '17 at 19:34

I was facing the same issue while executing the command mvn -version; however, I checked I had also set the mvn options in the environment variables setting, which gave me some Heap memory issue on the command prompt. So, I removed the maven options that I had set and then it worked fine for me.

score 0 · Answer 27 · answered Nov 04 '17 at 07:09

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I was facing the same issue and then I closed and reopened cmd.exe to get mvn -vto propagate to my command prompt.

If cmd was open when you set the variables they will not be available in that session.

answered Nov 04 '17 at 07:09

santosh shetty

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score 0 · Answer 28 · edited Apr 22 '18 at 01:45

Assuming you've created the variable path for maven as follows:

Under System path, click new then edit as follows:

Variable name: MAVEN_HOME

Variable value: C:\Program Files\apache-maven-3.5.3\bin

Then continue with these instructions:

Under System Path, update variable path by clicking on edit and add:

C:\Program Files\apache-maven-3.5.3\bin;

immediately after:

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk\1.8.0_161\bin;

remember to add semi-colon ; after \bin as included above and then run your cmd prompt and type:

mvn -v

Apache Maven install "'mvn' not recognized as an internal or external command" after setting OS environmental variables?

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