Due to a number of recent Qpid changes, I believe that now is a good time to re-examine the question of moving the Qpid Java build system from Ant to Maven. I'm aware this has been debated before, but this was mainly before I joined the project so please forgive me if I'm retreading old ground.
The changes that have brought this into the foreground are: - Rob's recent refactoring of protocol-specific and store-specific code to make it more module-based. - Robbie and I have started working on the new AMQP 1.0 JMS client and have adopted Maven from the outset. - Proton's Java implementation uses Maven. The experience of these changes suggests to me that we should replace Qpid's Ant-based build system with a Maven-based one. Whilst Maven is not perfect, I believe that it is: - functionally superior to our current custom system, - well-understood by most developers, - capable of easily meeting most non-standard requirements. In order to understand the magnitude of this task I've started a wiki page listing the tasks we'd need to do. It is not complete but is hopefully a useful start: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/qpid/Java+Build+System I'd like to hear people's view on this proposal. Phil
