A minimal Java 8 project using Maven

To use Java 8 with Maven is easy. Maven already supports it and it's good for JavaFX developers that a Java 8 is a JavaFX 8 application already!
To make easy the creation of new projects using JavaFX 8, I created an archetype for JavaFX applications. It will be useful for me, so it might be useful for someone else as well.

Using Maven with JavaFX 8

Having Maven 3.x and a Java 8 newest build, you are able to create JavaFX 8 applications using Maven! I created a "Hello World" application to serve as a starting point for new applications. The pom.xml is on github and the directories structure is as follow:

Building and Running from Maven

Make sure you export JAVA_HOME to the root path of your Java 8 installation. In my case, before running Maven I used the followin command (in Ubuntu 12.04):

$ export JAVA_HOME=/opt/java/jdk1.8.0/ 

After this you should be able to build your project:

$ mvn clean project

Notice that in the root directory you will have a jar, it's the final application! You should be able to run it using java:

$ java -jar target/jfx8-app.jar

To run the Java application main method using maven, we basically have three ways. To run this project, I used the following maven command: 

$ mvn exec:java -Dexec.mainClass="org.jugvale.App"

Then you should be able to see the application, which a really simple one. See the code(notice it's using Lambdas!!!) and an App screenshot:

package org.jugvale;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
import javafx.scene.control.Button;
import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane;

public class App extends Application{

        public static void main(String args[]){
                launch(args);
        }

        @Override
        public void start(Stage stage){
                Button btn = new Button(">> Click <<");
                btn.setOnAction(e -> System.out.println("Hello JavaFX 8"));
                StackPane root = new StackPane();
                root.getChildren().add(btn);
                stage.setScene(new Scene(root));
                stage.setWidth(300);
                stage.setHeight(300);
                stage.setTitle("JavaFX 8 app");
                stage.show();
        }

 }

What's so nice about it?

Maven allows me to use the IDE I want(actually in this case we can't use Eclipse since it's not supporting Java 8 yet) and we can extend this archetype to, for example, add support to Android using plugins. Read more about JavaFX and Android. From this project we can also create complex application without depending on an IDE, just sit and start programming!

Using Gradle

Tobias Schulte made a version of this using Gradle. For more information see the repository he created on github.
You don't even need to download anything, just clone the project, go to its root directory and type the following command:
$ ./gradlew build
It will build the project. To run it, use the following:
$./gradlew run

* Remember to set JAVA_HOME as your JDK 8 home directory before running these commands