Hi Emmanuel, Thanks for your insights. I certainly wouldn't count myself in the "ant rules" camp by any means, and agree M2 is streets ahead of M1. I like a lot of what M2 provides, but have this nagging concern about it's "push" nature as I mentioned in my previous posting.
It seems to me that while you aren't in explicit control of when things are updated you are being asked to be very trusting indeed, not withstanding that people are taking every precaution not to break things. Using an admittedly loose analogy it seems to me sort of like what would happen if Subversion asynchronously updated your source code without you making an explicit decision that it was a convenient time to do an "svn up". Anyway I'm no maven power-user by any means, so I'm talking from a position of ignorance and very limitted experience... and I know this thread is off topic anyway so I'll say no more... Let me say finally I'm not meaning to insult the ApacheDS or M2 crews in any way, but was just thinking out loud so to speak. Thanks for the link to the book as well!
