How to package software built with Maven in Debian
maven-debian-helper
The answer is maven-debian-helper. This tool must always be added to Build-Depends in debian/control when you want to package a pure Maven-based project.
The most important Debian specific packaging files are:
maven.properties: It's the file to disable tests or override specific values in your pom.xml file.
maven.rules; It's able to override Maven coordinates in pom.xml and point to Debian's local /usr/share/maven-repo. Downloading build-dependencies from the internet at build-time is forbidden. This is enforced by maven-debian-helper. You must package all build-dependencies for Debian and then you can use your system libraries to build the package.
maven.ignoreRules: Helps to ignore certain artifacts, either because they are not needed (test dependencies) or because they are not available in Debian yet.
and the debian/$PACKAGE.poms file: Sometimes you only need one Maven submodule. The poms file can ignore certain submodules, install artifacts also into /usr/share/java (which is useful for Ant projects), rename artifacts or ignore parent pom files.
More information and how they function are available at https://wiki.debian.org/Java/MavenRepoHelper. See also the Maven examples