I installed maven from here: http://maven.apache.org/download.cgi and also installed plugin for eclipse from the eclipse marketplace.
This is a really dumb question, but what's the difference between the two? both are same thing ? or for differnet purposes ? do we need both on system ?
Maven itself is the software you can use on your machine. It has nothing to do with Eclipse. You can use it from the command line with the mvn command to execute Maven goals on your projects in the file system.
The Maven Eclipse plugin (m2e) integrates Maven with Eclipse so you can comfortably use Maven functionality from inside Eclipse rather than using Maven as an external tool. The plugin just integrates Maven with Eclipse and needs a Maven installation to work. You can configure the plugin to use the Maven installation on your system but there is no need for one. It can use it's own internal "installation" of the actual Maven software. This would be basically the same as you can download and install yourself but it is integrated with the plugin. It therefor can't be used outside Eclipse.
