Tim O'Brien wrote:
I'm sorry, hold on... starting stopwatch.... "mvn help:describe
-Dplugin=nifty -Dmojo=nifty -Dfull" - alright, I type fast, but that took me
10 seconds. Then I hit enter and a whole *crapload* of information zoomed
past. Ok, CTRL-R, mvn, adding a "| less". Ok, for something like
"help:describe", I'm looking at eight or nine pages of sleep inducing
variable names.
Slow down, we agree more than we disagree. That's why I filed a bunch of
bugs against MPH today:
http://tinyurl.com/2c4j42
In particular, I think MPH-31 and MPH-32 would be good fixes, and don't
require weird changes to core. I'd prefer you'd typed "mvn help
-Dcmd=nifty:nifty", and that "mvn help" explained how that works.
I'm serious the help plugin hurts, go back to what Jason said about svn
doing a better job.
(Didn't I say that?) I'm not saying that the help plugin is perfect; I'm
saying that we don't need to re-invent the wheel or hack the CLI to make
this feature work, and that if you want to use it, you can start doing so
right now.
But as for finding plugins, it's better to search the Internet for that
sort of thing, rather than trying to turn the Maven core into an Internet
search engine for Maven plugins.
Dan, can I quote you on "It's better to search the Internet for that
sort of thing" the next time I have to defend Maven to some end-user who
is absolutely enraged by the fact that they've had to spend the last
fourteen hours trying to track down the reason why the dependency plugin
they have installed doesn't support the tree goal even though the
documentation on the Maven site tells them to run it (Hint: they don't
have the right version)
Version diagnosis is very different from finding plugins to use. It IS
better to search the Internet to find plugins, which is what the -G switch
is all about. (It tells you about all plugins available everywhere, not
just the ones you've got installed.) Searching the Internet isn't better
to diagnose version problems, but then, -G wouldn't have helped that
either.
In fact, the help plugin is a pretty good way of diagnosing versions, or
at least starting to. "mvn help:describe -Dplugin=dependency -Dmedium"
will tell you what you can do with the dependency plugin you've got
installed and, prominently, what version you're using.
Annoyed by those -Dfull and -Dmedium flags? Me, too... that's MPH-31,
MPH-32, and MPH-35.
No one is saying they want Maven to be the "Internet Search Engine" for
plugins. Maybe someone is saying, "what we have now isn't adequate".
Seconded.
We agree again!
Makes sense. But, wait, in that help:describe, you didn't call it a
"goal", the property was a "mojo"?
Yeah, that's why I already filed MPH-33 earlier today.
-Dan
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
