You may be suffering from selection bias in your sample! Here's an (old) StackOverflow post showing someone using enablePreview to test out a new JDK12 feature (which answers the "use case") well. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52232681/compile-and-execute-a-jdk-preview-feature-with-maven
In the 3000 projects you've surveyed you're probably mostly seeing "stable" CI runs rather than developmental test runs that may only exist on local machines or possibly feature branches, that you might not see on a search of just the default branch. On Mon, Nov 18, 2024 at 4:21 PM Chen Zhang <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi , > > I’m a researcher specializing in software engineering, and I'm currently > exploring configuration issues related to Maven, with a particular focus on > the `maven-compiler-plugin`. I have some questions and observations I'd > like to share, but I am not sure if this is the best place to post them. If > not, I apologize in advance. > > Recently, I studied the documentation of the `maven-compiler-plugin` and > analyzed its usage across more than 3,000 projects. During this > investigation, I noticed that several parameters—such as `enablePreview`, > `staleMillis`, `fileExtensions`, `showCompilationChanges`, and > `skipMultiThreadWarning`—are never utilized in these projects. This > observation made me curious about the design rationale behind these > parameters and their intended use cases. Are these parameters still > relevant, or do you think their usefulness has diminished over time? > > Moreover, considering that Maven provides an extensive range of plugins > and configuration parameters, I wonder whether the abundance of parameters > might become burdensome for users, especially when they have to familiarize > themselves with so many settings. Have there been any discussions or > considerations about potentially removing parameters that are rarely used? -- Dan Widdis
