Denis Bessmertniy wrote:
It is interesting why maven is so hard to understand? Why it is not well
documented? (It is all my own opinions)
I haven't so much probmlems with Ant, for example.
I am in the process of doing a handover of a fully mavenised build (all
the way through to using the release plugin for releases) to someone who
has only ever used ant before, and this process has highlighted that
maven IS hard for a beginner to understand.
Maven's first problem is that it is not described anywhere neatly in one
single paragraph. To a maven beginner, "project comprehension tool" is
entirely meaningless: Why do I need a tool to help me "comprehend" my
project? It makes no sense to a beginner.
I have tried to explain maven by calling it an "extensible Swiss Army
Knife": Rather than telling ant how to do every step of your build,
maven already knows how to do every step of your build. You just add the
missing bits of information like your project name and version number,
and maven does the rest automatically.
Another thing a beginner gets confused about is the bewildering volume
of plugins. To cut through this confusion I grouped plugins into the
basic core group of plugins, and all the other plugins after people ran
with the idea and went bananas. Getting across to the user that they
don't have to learn to use every plugin, but only the ones they need, is
very reassuring for a new user.
Something else new users get worried about is "what happens if maven
cannot do what I want maven to do", and here pointing out "if all else
fails" strategies like using the antrun plugin to get ant to do stuff
for you is very reassuring to the new user. The new user doesn't need to
know how the antrun plugin works, they only need to know that it is there.
Regards,
Graham
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