First, it's true that Ant is "the official" build tool for Struts 1.2.x -- it's the thing to use to make releases, etc, and nothing should be committed that breaks it.
That said, once you have Maven going, you can certainly use it to compile a Struts JAR that is equally usable to one built by Ant. Also, as far as I can tell, the Cactus tests run equally well in Maven -- I have some problems running tests that use cookies in both Ant and Maven, and have never gotten any feedback from any other users about it. (To run Cactus tests with Maven, you do have to set some of the properties in build.properties.)
Maven disadvantages (to me)From a 'nurturing the community' perspective, the cost of 'converting' vs.the cost of 'starting from scratch' can be more than we can afford right now. We seemed to have a lot more participation before the attempt to Mavenize began.
I can't believe that the presence of Maven files has scared people away. I don't have a better explanation for why participation seems lower than before (not sure I share the perception either) but the Ant stuff hasn't gone away and hasn't been deprecated.
I know I've found myself in several "states of mind" (if you will) when considering making changes/patches: - I don't want to make changes that could break the Maven build. - I know how to do foo in Ant, but what is the Maven equivalent? - If I add something to the Maven build process, will I get it correct on the Ant side?
I absolutely HATE the feeling of intimidation by my lack of knowledge of the toolset and rather than pull my hair out learning yet 'another neat tool' (pun indented) I (like others I'm sure) find myself fading into the background and do simple things here and there where I can.
Even as resident Maven apologist, none of these should be concerns. Maven is not yet the official build tool for Struts, and it won't be until it does everything the current Ant build does and there is no reason for concerns like this. Some might argue that Maven also shouldn't be official until they finally cut a 1.0 release -- I wouldn't make that argument, but I might not fight it very vigorously either. The only thing which is fragile (and which I think has broken again since last winter when I got it working) is using Maven to run the Cactus tests. But still, I should hope that no one is letting that slow them down.
Finally, remember that Maven can run any Ant task. The "maven.xml" file in the project root directory can be extended with custom goals which can be nearly 100% direct copies of stuff from a build.xml file. In fact, given that we have build.xml broken into multiple files, you could probably simply use an antcall task in maven.xml and not even copy anything.
But still, I consider Maven a "shortcut" for people who want to work with the source and build it, but who aren't necessarily interested in making official releases, building the Struts web site, etc. (I would like to see it get closer to that, but I haven't had much time to put into it myself.)
That said, I don't see any reason why someone who wants to submit patches can't do develop them using Maven instead of Ant.
Joe
--
Joe Germuska [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://blog.germuska.com "In fact, when I die, if I don't hear 'A Love Supreme,' I'll turn back; I'll know I'm in the wrong place."
- Carlos Santana
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
