I've done a bit of work with Maven 1 and am very familiar with it's
strengths and weaknesses. (I was quite disappointed that Maven 2 was
not a smooth or automatic transition from Maven 1) I'm beginning to use
Maven 2 on some other projects. Maven 2 solves some problems with Maven
1, but in my opinion creates a few of it's own (even more verbose XML
being one of them.) Personally, If I could "snap my fingers" and have
a working Maven 2 build of Roller magically appear in SVN, I would do it
- but it isn't that easy.
I have a few points I want to state (or restate) regarding Maven 2 and
this project:
1. A switch to Maven 2 will not add any new features to Roller
2. The Ant build is already using the Maven 2 Ant Tasks for deploying
Roller jars to local Maven repository
3. The most active committers on the project (Dave and Allen) are
opposed to Maven 2.
4. There are ongoing efforts to make improvements in Maven 2 that may
address some of the valid concerns expressed on this list. For example
<http://www.jroller.com/mrdon/entry/making_maven_2_not_suck>.
I suggest we close the issue of a Maven 2 build for now and re-open the
issue when two or more of the following are true:
1. A much improved version of Maven is available (e.g. a 2.1 release)
2. The Roller build needs to be restructured anyway (perhaps to break
it down into re-usable components, etc.)
3. There are (new) active committers on the project who are comfortable
with Maven 2 and are willing to be responsible for the conversion AND
ongoing maintenance (including helping the other committers adjust)
I'm hoping to get much more involved with Roller for the 4.1 release,
but I don't want to deal with a Maven 2 transition during that release.
As I learn Roller (and Maven 2) better over the next few months, I'll be
thinking about writing a Maven 2 proposal for a future release, but I
really don't think now is a good time to make the change.
-- Sean
