Missing maven .m2 folder

On a Windows machine, the .m2 folder is expected to be located under ${user.home}. On Windows 7 and Vista this resolves to <root>\Users\<username> and on XP it is <root>\Documents and Settings\<username>\.m2. So you'd normally see it under c:\Users\Jonathan\.m2.

If you want to create a folder with a . prefix on Windows, you can simply do this on the command line.

  • Go to Start->Run
  • Type cmd and press Enter
  • At the command prompt type md c:\Users\Jonathan\.m2 (or equivalent for your ${user.home} value).

Note that you don't actually need the .m2 location unless you want to create a distinct user settings file, which is optional (see the Settings reference for more details).

If you don't need a separate user settings file and don't really want the local repository under your user home you can simply set the location of your repository to a different folder by modifying the global settings file (located in \conf\settings.xml).

The following snippet would set the local repository to c:\Maven\repository for example:

<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0
                  http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">
  <localRepository>c:\Maven\repository</localRepository>
  ...

When you first install maven, .m2 folder will not be present in C:\Users\ {user} path. To generate the folder you have to run any maven command e.g. mvn clean, mvn install etc. so that it searches for settings.xml in .m2 folder and when not found creates one.

So long story cur short, open cmd -> mvn install

It will show could not find any projects(Don't worry maven is working fine :P) now check your user folder.

P.S. If still not able to view .m2 folder try unhiding hidden items.