As a sometimes Maven developer, and long time user these are some of the issues that often rub people the wrong way:
1) Maven didn't do enough beta's on the march to 1.0, heck we are still at RC1. This has meant that a lot of people have shot a lot of time wrestling with Maven getting it to work. Beta 8 was a pretty brutal time for Maven users :-). And, depending on the parts of Maven you are using, there are still many rough spots in it like the memory leak that prevents huge multi-project setups from building the documentation nicely. Also, some of the reports don't work real well with Subversion, things like that. The farther you stray from "I want to run some unit tests, build a jar and some javadocs" the more problems you get. Having said that, it is getting better, and Ant pre 1.0 apparently had the same growing pains. A lot of people got burned using Maven during the early versions. And depending on your tolerance for pain, it may still be too early. 2) You gotta do it the Maven way. For better or worse, Maven is an attempt to standardize build practices. If you don't agree with the build practice then Ant is a much better fit. Ant lets you setup the structure however you like. Maven wants a standard structure. Maven *likes* docs in xdoc format for example. Maven wants you to put everything in project.xml. Maven wants a src/java and a src/test directories. The more you customize, the more you find yourself swimming upstream. Over time Maven will have better integration for different formats for docs etc, but right now it is really easier to just go with what it does. 3) The look and feel strikes some as kinda brutal.. although that is getting better. The new default l&f being prototype at http://maven.apache.org is much nicer, and for another example of good customization check out http://opensource.atlassian.com/seraph/. Google for "Maven Sucks" (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=maven+s ucks) and "Maven Rocks" (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=maven+r ocks) you can get lots more opinions. I definitly don't agitate for Maven when a project's build already works well. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. However, if your build is broken, or you are starting on a new project, then Maven is worth a look. The Hibernate project has a very effective build, and the site docs are all very well put together. Of course, it would be nice maybe to see JCoverage/Clover, StatCVS, PMD, Simian, FindBugs, Junit etc reports added :-) Eric Pugh > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf > Of Les A. > Hazlewood > Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 2:29 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [Hibernate] Versioning Jar Files? > > > Quoting Christian Bauer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > I'll do it. We don't need any Maven praising here... > > Folks, > > Whats wrong with Maven? > > Seriously, I'm not trying to start a flame war or promote > dissention from > within, but what are your gripes? I'm trying to get a valued > opinion before > possibly incorporating it into my own projects... > > In the (brief) evaluation I've done of the product, I've > found it to be > incredibly powerful, relieving the drudgery of ant tasks that > so many projects > must execute (especially open-source ones). The automagic > jar file dependency > checking/downloading alone seems worth it, given all the > problems teams and > end-users face with dealing with dependencies (which is > directly related to > this thread). As a computer scientist, it is almost infused > in my psyche to > avoid re-inventing the wheel for commonly executed tasks. > Maven does this (or > at least comes closer than anything I've seen for PCM). > > What are your thoughts? I'm trying to get an intelligent > response here...not > Christian's typical condescending "Maven is the spawn of > Satan" response :) > > Regards, > > Les Hazlewood > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. > Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign > up for IBM's > Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell > to sys admin. > Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click > _______________________________________________ > hibernate-devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hibernate-devel ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell to sys admin. Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click _______________________________________________ hibernate-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hibernate-devel
