On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:50 AM, Alen Vrečko <[email protected]> wrote:

> I don't get it.

Why spend all this effort in being able to build with
> Maven? Surely not because every 2 or so years a couple of jars need to
> be put in maven central? Or because you need to install ant (sudo apt-
> get install ant)? What is next? Converting Gwt to Maven?
>
It's not about the process of building.  Of course, replacing 'ant <target>'
(oops, I don't know what goal to execute without reading through the
build...) with 'mvn clean package' isn't worth the effort.  But, the toolset
and regularity you gain after a build is ported is worth it in many cases.
 For instance, how do you generate source jars for your open source library?
 How do you generate and differentiate nightly snapshot builds?

You may be doing these things, but many devs aren't.  Many different excuses
are given, but in the end, it boils down to not being able to manage them
along with everything else.  These 'ancillary' tasks are labeled overkill,
and are ignored because it's too difficult to do with their toolset.  The
regularity of maven builds allows plugin code to do much of this ancillary
work for you.

Having to work "the Maven way" at work - using Guice build system and
> layout has been refreshing and easier on the eyes.
>
> Here is -1 vote for Maven and -infinity vote for Maven structure. src/
> main/java hurts my fingers every-time I am using the console not to
> mention src/main/resources. I don't buy into this helps with
> understanding project structure faster. How much brain power does it
> take to understand that .java files are in src dir and not in src/main/
> java?
>

Why waste brain power trying to remember the layout of the 100s of builds
you have to work with?
Why are they laid out differently? Many times because it makes something
easier for the particular project.  Other times, it is because the world has
millions of coders, and many of them like to think that everyone else is
stupid.  Especially if they use emacs/vim, a different directory layout, 3/5
space indents, or ....

The maven stance is that its the irregularity, not the perfect fitness of
the solution, that kills.  I don't think many people love the maven
directory structure, but it is general enough that it works with most
projects.  This alone makes it better than most pet layouts.  Most of us
don't have a broad enough experience to come up with something that doesn't
break down in someone else's use case.  Some apache people have a pretty
broad experience, since they manage so many projects.


> If you are always using java there is no need for /java and if you
> don't like to separate non .java files then there is no need for main
> and resources all what is left is src and test. Given Less is More I
> find src and test much more elegant.
>

See last point. I might always be using java, but your project might be
using Groovy or Scala classes along with Java.  There are plugins that
compile groovy and scala code with little configuration, if you use the
standard layout.  They can all coexist because src/ isn't assumed to be
java, or scala, or groovy.

Now having src/ contain java is much more elegant for your case, but who
cares about how elegant it is if you are the only one to ever see this
project?  If other people are going to have to work on the project, using a
structure they are immediately familiar with will make them much more
productive.

In the case of open source projects, where healthy ones get patches from
hundreds of developers, a low barrier to entry is key.  It means the
difference between a bug getting fixed immediately because random people
will dig into the code just to see, and bugs going unfixed until the main
developer gets around to it.

How about just putting guice/src and guice/test into guice/core/src
> and guice/core/test? This should make Maven happy but still getting
> rid of /java and /main/resources?
>
Again, a custom solution.  It should have a significant advantage to justify
the variation.  Because it looks nice it not significant enough to justify
the cumulative time it will take each new person to get used to it.


> Imho Maven is overrated.

Many people would love to hear of a better and more comprehensive solution
for developing software.
I'd love to hear yours.

Cheers
> Alen
>
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