Once you have configured your project in your IDE you can build it from there. However if you prefer you can use maven from the command line. In that case you could be interested in this short list of commands:

• mvn compile: it will just compile the code of your application and tell you if there are errors
• mvn test: it will compile the code of your application and your tests. It will then run your tests (if you wrote any) and let you know if some fails
• mvn install: it will do everything mvn test does and then if everything looks file it will install the library or the application into your local maven repository (typically under /.m2). In this way you could use this library from other projects you want to build on the same machine

If you need more information please take a look at this quick tutorial.