I'm sure I'm about to throw open the lid to Pandora's Box. Before I start asking my questions and presenting my ideas let me say that this message is meant to be helpful and not critical. I proceed with the realization that I may have no idea what I am talking about. So, casting the fear of making myself out to be a complete fool, I will proceed:
It seems that Maven is tightly integrated into GeoTools. I am wondering what benefits this provides to the GeoTools project, and if these benefits outweigh the costs. To me the biggest cost of tightly integrating Maven with GeoTools is the difficultly this adds for new contributors like myself. This is a real problem for new contributors that don't know a thing about Maven. To be completely honest, I asked myself if it was worth the effort of dealing with Maven when I was trying to set-up my GPX2 module. I kept thinking "I'd be better off spending this time to write code". I'm not trying to pee in anybody's bowl of Cheerios with this observation. I'm only trying to offer the perspective of a new contributor that doesn't know a great deal about Maven. If Geotools is a modular programming library (which I believe it strives to be), why not allow individual module maintainers to decide how their modules will be built/compiled? Use Maven for the "main" Geotools Jar file, but let other module maintainers build Jar files for their own modules however they choose. For me this would be a simple Ant script. I'm ready to control my own build process as a module maintainer, and I think other module maintainers would be as well. Why introduce the overhead of Maven into this process if you don't have to? If Maven is a critical part of GeoTools, why is it so critical? What benefits does it provide? Do we have a power Maven user that helps us integrate Maven into GeoTools and that can assist new users in getting up to speed with Maven. To be honest, I have not been able to identify this person. (Perhaps they have been busy with other business.) I think the Geotools community should be able to provide this type of expertise for new contributors. My own limited experience with Geotools gives me the impression that Maven is a tool that we are using, but don't fully understand, or at least aren't prepared to fully support. I think this will be a bar to continued contributions and support. You can crucify me now, but remember I am only trying to help Geotools become more widely adopted in the Java geospatial community. Landon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list Geotools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
