Thorsten Scherler wrote:
On Wed, 2007-01-24 at 13:53 +0000, Ross Gardler wrote:
...
I have not looked in Ivy but saw that you used it. I was thinking to switch the stax dispatcher to maven2. What are the differences? Why you prefer Ivy to maven? I ask out of curiosity.
The main difference is that IVY is nothing more than a dependency management tool, whereas Maven is a complete build management tool. Ivy does what it does very well, Maven, IMHO, tries to do too much.
IVY integrates really well with ANT and therefore allows the user to have control over the whole build process. Of course, Maven2 advocates would say that it too provides a high degree of control over how a project is structured etc. But I don't have Maven skills whereas I do have ANT skills.
Furthermore, our desk research showed that projects that were large and/or different from a standard Maven2 project had difficulties making things work. Look at the mess Cocoon got into with Maven2. This may be the same lack of skills issue, or it may be fundamental problems with Maven2, not having actually used Maven2 I can't claim to know which it is.
Finally, Ivy works, and it works well for me. I now have a set of "standard" ant script that I use for every IVY+ANT project. I intend to give these to the IVY project, but am still waiting for the CCLA to be signed etc. These scripts allow the quick, and easy creation of a "standard" project, but being ANT scripts there is loads of opportunity for customisation by ANT skilled people.
There is no need to install IVY to use it with these scripts, they do that for you (assuming you have ANT installed).
Is IVY+ANT better than Maven? My desk research says yes, but I have never done anything in Maven, so I can't support this from experience. All I know is I am sticking with IVY+ANT in my own work because I'm happy with it.
What we do here in Forrest should be discussed. Ross
