On Feb 19, 2010, at 1:29 PM, tbee wrote: > > > > Stephen Connolly-2 wrote: >> >> what maven gives you is a consistent set of phases that any developer only >> has to learn once. >> > > Agree and that is the lure of Maven. But if you look at the plugins, > execution tags and the weird behavior of per default compiling against java > 1.3 (in stead of the default of the used JDK, which mean you always have to > add these tags), noone can really claim that a Maven pom is much more > readable than a well setup ant file. > > I agree; "well setup" is important here, but at least it is possible to do > it clean and concise. Coming back to my question in this thread; adding a > new plugin to the build cycle requires (in best standard syntax) at least 5 > lines of code, and that is without any configuration. Why can't I just > specify in the plugin when it needs to run, so I only need to add it? >
Because a plugin consists of many goals and Maven doesn't know which goal in your plugin you might want to run. Typically you would configure this in a parent POM with the goals you want to run, and then configure any child modules with only the configuration you wish to apply. Sure, if you're dealing with a single module there's no benefit of inheritance. If you really find you want goals of certain plugins to be executed automatically then yes, you make a custom packaging and make it transparent by referring to the packaging. This is all with Maven 2.x. With Maven 3.x this will be easier with mixins and we can learn from our experiences with Maven 2.x. Most users don't find defining the pluginManagement section to setup all the plugins they are going to execute not over onerous. Even in an Ant macrodef you're going to have to define the skeletal structure of what you want to execute to reuse later. Most don't honestly care if it takes 5 lines to invoke. I've asked thousands of people at this point. Not that it won't stop us from making something more terse. > I like the idea of Maven, but in the implementation it is often missing the > point. Another example: take a pom-package (a pom file with just references > but no artifact on its own); if you refer to that pom, you need to specify > type=pom in the reference. Why? Maven can read the referred pom file and > come to that conclusion itself. Because how the classpath is constructed by referring to the type. Each type carries with it instructions, the default is jar which is why it's not present most of the time. There are handlers that are used in conjunction with a type which controls how that particular type is dealt with in Maven. Handling BOMs will be better in Maven. > > Anyhow, this small rant naturally is not focused on you, I'm just expressing > my amazement about that the answer is not what I expected. Generally the case when you first you Maven, and you are accustom to whacking together a macrodef in whatever form seems natural to you. We deal with millions of users trying to do the same things the same way. We've made some mistakes, for sure, and we can't just change things immediately without breaking things. Most of us are aware of the problems you're facing and we'll fix a lot of that with Maven 3.x. But in the meantime we can't radically change things without harming a lot of users. Maven 3.x is almost 100% backward compatible but will allow users to try out new features incrementally (that is a lot harder then it sounds). Sure, if you make your Ant build you can do whatever you want, it only affects you. We have a slightly larger set of users to worry about. > > Thanks for answering though! > -- > View this message in context: > http://old.nabble.com/custom-maven-plugin-default-phase-tp27626122p27658340.html > Sent from the Maven Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org > Thanks, Jason ---------------------------------------------------------- Jason van Zyl Founder, Apache Maven http://twitter.com/jvanzyl ----------------------------------------------------------
