Individual Apache projects are not this size, but as more apache projects have moved to Maven2, my life has become much easier. I don't have to add jars to our own maven repo any more, or manually work out the dependency tree. (this was starting to kill us in maven 1).
When I last had to upgrade Jackrabbit for instance, all I did was change the version number in the dependencyManagement section of the base pom. After checking, I committed, and none of the 5 QA servers around the world noticed. Without the strong version management and transitive dependency resolution I would have to trawl through all the possible version collisions to check for incompatibilities on every version upgrade.
I know Maven2 is very Java focused, and when it doesn't work can be hard for the new comer to work out what is going on, but the doc is much better than it was 12 months ago.
So my vote ( I don't have one, but I will cast it anyway :) ), is to stick with Maven 2, and make the build work. I will happily help in that task... because its going to make my day job much much easier.
Just my 2p (£) Ian On 27 Apr 2008, at 18:04, Alexander Klimetschek wrote:
Hi,as someone new to this project but quite familiar with Maven (~2 years by now) I'd suggest to keep maven!I know Maven has its problems, is quite focused on the Java-world and only works properly if you do everything the Maven-way. But it always works in the end and IMHO it has these two killer-features:1) standardizes the build process 2) external dependency management / public artifact repositoriesPoint 1 is very useful in Open-Source projects as new developers with experience from other projects can immediately understand the build process and directory layout. And maven seems to be standard at Apache by now.The second feature is most useful for all library-style projects that are embedded into other systems to build real applications. As all the libraries often share common libs (eg. XML parsers, commons- io, http-client etc.), the dependencies are automatically shared. And starting a project that uses the latest stable release of Shindig is simple, since you only have to add the reference to the shindig lib(s) once to the pom.xml and the rest is fetched automatically.Just my 2 cents... Alex Am 26.04.2008 um 20:42 schrieb Michael Papp:+1 on Santiago's comments. Given that this is a community project, the useof a tool such as Maven should be based on what works and generalconsensus. I also would add that this should not be cast as a right/wrong, good/evil discussion. The use of any tool adds value to a project only whenit increases productivity and/or ease of use (in this case, download/build/install/run). Maven does simplify fetching externalresources (although this could be done in subversion as well) and managing dependencies. OTOH, the current situation demonstrates that this tool only adds value when "everything is right" and can be impediment as a project changes/evolves. As long as the interested parties to this effort feel that the current thrashing will not be repeated in a "business as usual" sense going forward, then Maven should be an acceptable tool for the project. If change is going to be constant (for the foreseeable future), and given Maven's inherent weaknesses, now is a good time to consider the alternativesand validate the belief that this tool can be managed effectively. MichaelOn Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 4:08 AM, Santiago Gala <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:El mié, 23-04-2008 a las 17:53 +0100, Ian Boston escribió:I was wondering after the recent rapid changes in the build, how much' stomach ' people had for sorting out the dependency and plugin management in the build to bring it more inline with something like http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/jackrabbit/trunk/pom.xm<rant> I have vetoed maven in all the occasions I have had (and got ignored most of the times just because it was "cool and what everyone was using") because of several reasons: - bad documentation and unstable/changing features/behaviors- transparent download of "thingies" (I don't know or care what) that makes it difficult to work offline without having to remember strangeswitches- transparent download of dependencies that makes it difficult to assessdependencies (IMO an esencial part of Software Engineering, and something that should never be abstracted away) - very stateful under the hood (oh, you just remove the repository directory / oh, you just reboot windows ...)- a tool that uses "install" just for storing things for internal use iscrearly self-centered, not task or user centered- extreme verbosity for useless information and silence about important things, i.e., it talks a lot about what it does, but nothing about whatI do with it, something that always irritate me a lot.- ugly XML and confusing declarative stuff, something shared with ant - unnatural targets, where the default is always exactly what you don'twant (it remembers me wordperfect on this one)- mostly always can't deal properly with dependencies, requiring "clean"quite often - it is very resource heavy, compare with make or ant - it is written in java, a proprietary language with no legal OS implementation that the ASF is having problems to turn into freesoftware because of nasty business practices (breach of contract) by Sun Microsystems, and that I think will break in the same way as OpenSolaris at the first governance conflict because of Sun's predatory practices of late. This means that a pure free shindig install, using the PHP codefor the server, will still need to use java or duplicate the build system. </rant>I have been learning to tolerate it as a bare user, as "it is cool and what everybody else uses" but I will never dig into it, use it in any project where I can avoid it, or help making maven builds as a form of civil resistance, much like when I abandoned windows for linux in 2000.So don't count on me on this one. I'll just use, and bitch about, whatever other people sets there. :)So please, do it and make mvn the most invisible part of the project if possible. :) Having like 70% of the resources of the project going totrying to deal with maven for a couple of weeks just to do a simple restructuring of the build system is wasteful. Regards Santiago<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>-- Alexander Klimetschek [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Day JCR Cup 08 | Win a MacBook Pro: http://dev.day.com/ <<
