Maven Shell is a CLI interface for Maven that enables faster turn-around, and a more intelligent interaction with repositories and projects. Using Maven Shell, you will be able to speed up your builds because project information and Maven plugins are loaded into a single, always-ready JVM instance which can execute a Maven build.

The following IT blog post takes you through the basics of Maven Shell, and gives a quick lesson on what you can expect from Maven Shell 0.10.

Sonatype has released a nifty utility called Maven Shell that allows developers to execute maven goals/phases in a pre-loaded shell environment, significantly reducing the build time. It does this by loading up a JVM, Maven, and any loaded plugin once and leverages that existing load for each subsequent build. I downloaded the .10 binary and played around with it with a very simple multi-module project.

Read the full article here. And to get started, download the latest release of Maven Shell 0.10.