Hey all, I was thinking again the other day about how mixins could be introduced to maven to improve/fix some of the issues found with the rigid parent/child lineage of poms. At the same time I was looking at the remote-resources plugin and a small lightbulb went on in my mind - we all ready have profiles in maven, for packaging up settings - why can't we source those profiles from a repository?
Something like: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"; xmlns:xsi=" http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"; xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd";> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> ... <profiles> <profile> <id>osgibundle</id> <dependency> <groupId>com.talios</groupId> <artifactId>osgibundle</artifactId> <version>1.0.3</version> </dependency> </profile> </profiles> </project> In this project, we have a profile defined with an ID, and a single top-level dependency which would direct maven to download the POM identified by the dependency, and look for a profile defined with the same ID - and inline it's definition and continue as normal. The caveats around this would be something like: - if your profile has a <dependency> element, then it MUST ONLY contain <id> and <dependency> - The dependency <type> is assumed to be <type>pom</type>. - Similar to plugins, version ranges SHOULD NOT be resolvable ( looking at [1] this allows maven to have a more guaranteed project outcome, just as tho the profile was defined in the POM directly ). Unlike a totally new mixin system, this is an evolution of an existing maven context, which may make it easier for people to understand. Thoughts? [1] http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-profiles.html -- "Great artists are extremely selfish and arrogant things" — Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree
