I have brought this notion up before, but I have been thinking about it
a bit more.
Would it make sense to use Maven technology for software deployment and
installation as opposed to just builds?
What I envision is something akin to the Global Assembly Cache in .NET,
but for Maven artifacts. In particular, the local repository would act
like a GAC, but you might want to separate a system local repository
from the user local repositories.
The basic idea is that when deploying/installing software you would not
bundle all your dependent artifact into your installer, rather you would
just bundle their coordinates. At installation time you would install
the Maven Installer if it was not already there, then your installer
would work in conjunction with the Maven Installer. Basically the Maven
Installer subsystem would simply download the dependent artifacts from
Maven Central or elsewhere, and put them in the System Repository
(similar to the GAC).
One benefit of this is that if you have a lot of software that all
reference the same artifacts, they can share copies. Other benefits
would be similar to those for the .NET GAC, although hopefully we could
avoid some of the problems the GAC has created.
Another benefit is that installers could be smaller by not bundling in
dependent artifacts. Installation could be faster in that if dependent
artifacts are already in the System Repository downloading and
installing them is unnecessary.
So am I just thinking crazy, or is there any potential benefit to this idea?
Cheers, Eric
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