trying to solve IT problems

Maven builds often take some time. This often causes me to start doing something else (read mail, browse web), which makes me unaware of when the build completes and I can continue working.

There should be a way to fix this. On Ubuntu, you get notifications when mail arrives, when network is up/down etc. Why not use this same system to get notifications when the maven build completes.

Maven notification window

You can do this by adding the following in your ~/.bash_aliases file:

alias maven="command mvn"
notified_maven() {
  maven $* ; notify-send --icon=message-im "mvn" "build finished"    
}
alias mvn=notified_maven

Update
Thanks to Adrien, you can also use a more advanced version, showing the build result and maven parameters.

alias maven="command mvn"
notified_maven() {
  maven $* | \
  perl -pe'$m|=/BUILD .*SUCCESS/; END {exit!$m}' && \
  notify-send --icon=face-cool "`basename $(pwd)`: mvn $*" "Build SUCCESS" || \
  notify-send --icon=face-crying "`basename $(pwd)`: mvn $*" "Build FAILED"
}
alias mvn=notified_maven