[macos] Maven home (M2_HOME) not being picked up by IntelliJ IDEA

I am trying to do a simple maven build with IntelliJ IDEA 10.5.1 on OS X Lion and am getting the following error:

Error running my-app [package]: No valid Maven installation found. Either set the home directory in the configuration dialog or set the M2_HOME environment variable on your system.

I have set M2_HOME to the following, but I am still having issues. And yes, I did restart IntelliJ.

$ echo $M2_HOME
/usr/share/maven

I then manually entered the path to maven in IntelliJ's Maven Settings for the project. This is not something that I want to do for every project, so is there something I am missing with how to get IntelliJ know where my maven home is?

Another option is to add the M2_HOME variable at: IntelliJ IDEA=>Preferences=>IDE Settings=>Path Variables

After a restart of IntelliJ, IntelliJ IDEA=>Preferences=>Project Settings=>Maven=>Maven home directory should be set to your M2_HOME variable.

In case you don't want to use the M2_HOME and want to direct the IntelliJ to the maven installation you can simply set it by:

• goto File => Setting => Maven => Maven home directory
• point to your maven build directory e.g. /usr/local/maven/apache-maven-3.0.4

A better way is to have a symlink e.g. 'latest' for the latest version and point your IntelliJ to use that for consistency, given latest points to the latest version of maven installed on your box.

type in Terminal:

$ mvn --version

then get following result:

Apache Maven 3.0.5 (r01de14724cdef164cd33c7c8c2fe155faf9602da; 2013-02-19 16:51:28+0300)
Maven home: /opt/local/share/java/maven3
Java version: 1.6.0_65, vendor: Apple Inc.
Java home: /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
Default locale: ru_RU, platform encoding: MacCyrillic
OS name: "mac os x", version: "10.9.4", arch: "x86_64", family: "mac"

here in second line we have:

Maven home: /opt/local/share/java/maven3

type this path into field on configuration dialog. That's all to fix!

If you are having this problem with a homebrew installation of maven 3 on the OSX 10.9.4 then check out this blog post.

Got to this answer ? probably the answers above are to long ...

just type in :

echo "setenv M2_HOME $M2_HOME" | sudo tee -a /etc/launchd.conf

and restart your mac (thats it!)

restarting is annoying ? just use the command :

grep -E "^setenv" /etc/launchd.conf | xargs -t -L 1 launchctl

and restart IntelliJ IDEA

If M2_HOME is configured to point to the Maven home directory then:

1. Go to File -> Settings
2. Search for Maven
3. Select Runner

4. Insert in the field VM Options the following string:

   Dmaven.multiModuleProjectDirectory=$M2_HOME
   

Click Apply and OK