This is an offtopic post. It's not really related to webwork, and is probably going to be unpleasant, so those of you with sensitive dispositions, hit delete now...
So I find myself having to use maven to build a project (jira in this case). This is something I was not looking forward to, but I thought well everyone says how great maven is, so surely it'll be a smooth experience. First obstacle, everyone says to use the cvs version. Of course there are no nightly builds or snapshots. No problem, I grab it all from cvs. A quick browse of their instructions says all I have to do is set an env var (nevermind that env vars and java are a bad idea), and run a bootstrap build file. All deceptively clear and straightforward. Needless to say, my attempts resulted in nothing more than abysmal failures. My first attempt was on OSX, and to my surprise, the buildfile told me I had to set JAVA_HOME. It goes without saying that all other ant buildfiles work flawlessly, and none demand JAVA_HOME (and those that do need it are able to figure it out automagically easily enough). After that of course the build failed horribly, with a mile or two of stacktraces. I shrug and think 'ohwell, it's a bunch of people who think java==windows, I'll try later on a windows box'. Onto the windows box. The build does indeed progress a bit further, but of course dies horribly during one of the tests. As part of the dying process, it cleans out everything that's been built. How...considerate. Miles of stack traces ensue. The stack traces themselves meander about all over the place, in and out of ant code, commons-jelly, werkz, maven, etc etc. All the 'support' jar files are some kind of cvs snapshot for the 20 or so dependencies maven has. One day, maven might be a good tool. Right now though, it seems suicidal to me to basically rely on over a dozen unrelated projects (most of which are just cvs snapshots) just to build a project. Maven is not a successor to ant nor is it a superset, it's ant as perverted by an evil scientist. Those who like wires hanging out everywhere, testtubes with many colourful substances (half of which are lethal), and the odd crazy cackle hurled your way would find maven a tremendously enjoyable and satisfying experience. Everyone else though probably....wouldn't. Maybe it's all my fault/incompetence though, and I AM willing to concede that I might have missed some crucial step that the docs mention. However, I still feel that it shouldn't be quite so easy to end up with a completely non- functional bloated pile of jakarta vomit. Apolegetically, Hani ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.NET email is sponsored by: Thawte.com - A 128-bit supercerts will allow you to extend the highest allowed 128 bit encryption to all your clients even if they use browsers that are limited to 40 bit encryption. http://ads.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/redirect.pl?thaw0030en _______________________________________________ Opensymphony-webwork mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/opensymphony-webwork
