On 17 Dec 07, at 11:57 AM 17 Dec 07, Andy Dingfelder wrote:
Before folks flame Mark, I would point out that he really asked
multiple questions, some of which are versy good:
1 (RE the proposal to make q4e the eclipse standard) What are
people's thoughts about this?
Just a brief note as not to incite panic.
1. Q4E making a proposal at Eclipse by doesn't, by any stretch of the
imagination, mean that it's going to be official anything. The
proposal has been accepted, that doesn't mean it's been accepted as a
project. So becoming an official project is a hurdle and I have
already talked with folks like Jeff McAffer, and Mike Milinkovich
about bringing m2eclipse to Eclipse.
2. Q4E has no paid developers, while Sonatype has recently started
paying developers to work full-time on the integration.
3. Q4E has zero diversity, go look at the proposal. The draft proposal
for m2eclipse has the support of many large companies, and many
organizations that want to integrate m2eclipse. Theses companies have
zero interest in Q4E. And I mean big companies.
4. Any project once at Eclipse goes through a long process to get
included into the platform. That will not happen for at least a year.
The fastest turn around time for a technology project getting into the
platform is 18 months for Mylyn. This is not a short process. The
proposal for Q4E being accepted really means nothing. They don't have
any mentors and until such a time the project won't be accepted. Folks
at Eclipse know my intention to submit a proposal. So there might be
some initial mumblings, but when people see our proposal and the
support we have there isn't going to be any questions what codebase
will be the official one.
5. No one working on Q4E actually does anything on the Maven project.
The folks working on the embedder, or the technology used to embed
Maven, are myself, and John Casey primarily. So it's not likely any
other project is going be able to effectively do the work. So Sonatype
pays people full-time to work on Maven and to work on the integration.
6. My personal opinion is that Q4E is a failed marketing tactic by a
failed attempt at a company and won't be going anywhere soon. I
wouldn't put much credence in the blogosphere and marketing FUD.
7. I plan to support m2eclipse for a long time. That's means real
dollars and continued work on Maven's core to support the integration
effort.
I think this is the most particularly relevant question asked and
needs more discussion
2. Have you used Q4E, what did you think?
As Eugene pointed out, we don't want to spend a lot of time here
discussing the pros and cons of q4e, thats what their mailing list
is for. The last thing we want is for q4e folks to get defensive on
these lists if folks here post negative items about q4e.
Having said that, discussions centered around comparisons between
the 2 products perhaps may not be welcome on their list either, so
where does such a discussion belong? Perhaps someone needs a blog
or 3rd party "neutral" area where a comparison could be presented.
3. Will this (eventually) mean the end of m2eclipse?
I saw Eugene's response (As for m2eclipse, there are no plans to
discontinue the project.) and I hope this holds true for a long time.
The important thing to consider here is that this type of situation
has already occurred in eclipse and we need to be ready for it as
well. Consider subversion for example, where there have been 2
competing projects (Subclipse vs Subversive) fighting for entry as
an "official" part of eclipse.
So, I leave you with a question:
Do we "allow" q4e to be unchallenged as the only official maven
integrator? or do put m2 forward as well as a candidate?
My feel is that if they DO get added as the sole "official" maven
plugin, we will have a hard time getting people to use m2 as a 3rd
party plugin. Why would people bother adding an extra plugin if a
different one already does the job by default?
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Thanks,
Jason
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Jason van Zyl
Founder, Apache Maven
jason at sonatype dot com
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