The NAR plugin for Maven allows you to compile native code (C++, C and Fortran)
on a number of different architectures (Linux, Windows, MacOSX, Solaris, ...)
and with a number of different compilers/linkers (g++, Microsoft Visual C++,
CC, ...) The output produced is wrapped up in Native ARchive files (.nar) some
of which are machine independent (-noarch), while others are machine specific
and thus depend on a combination of machine architecture(A),
operating-system(O) and linker(L) identified as AOL. These nar files can be
installed in the local Maven repository and deployed to a standard Maven (web)
server, using the standard maven-install-plugin and maven-deploy-plugin.