To build the Docker images, dockerfile-maven-plugin is used. A plugin that only integrates Maven with the Docker Daemon API to build, tag or push images. It only requires a Dockerfile to run and does not provide any kind of abstraction to the directives within a Dockerfile.

The benefit the plugin provides for the build process, is that you are able to retrieve Maven artifacts from the Maven reactor or a Maven repository to be consumed by the Docker image build process. It also allows us to pass in Docker build arguments from Maven properties and therefore integrates the Docker image build process into any kind of continuous integration system with the ability to pass in context specific parameters.