Sincere apologies to the dev team if this email seems like a troll, I
absolutely don't mean it to be. I'm aware that they continue to do
outstanding work and are few in number.
The more I use Maven the more I get a feel for the size and shape of
it and find myself looking for features that aren't there. Since I
joined the community I've posted questions on what I consider to be
the most important aspects of a build system namely (yes in this order):
1. Usability from Ant - there are hundreds of Ant targets out there
that are useful for me today. I can't justify waiting for them to be
rewritten as Maven equivalents not only because I need functionality
today, but also because I don't see why I have to abandon my
experience with ant.
2. Usability from Eclipse - when will I be able to ditch the command
line and create and manage projects entirely from eclipse
3. Need to do a myriad of simple things such as automatically run
java command or deploy to tomcat. I used to do this all the time in
my ant scripts, ie run my build.xml script and at the end it would
run my app on completion. It's a credit to those on this list who
reply with ideas and workarounds - however this is kind of related to
2 above, where there are lots of ant tasks out there that are tested
to death and that I should be able to use today.
4. Online documentation. Simple example was trying to get the
assembly plugin to work which Daniel Shomer had to look into the
source code to advise me of what to do. This is just one example of
many.
5. Other project structures. Sometimes I will encounter a project
where all the source code is in one tree (beginning with com/). I'm
not saying its any better than one directory per artifact, but I am
saying I encounter such projects in my career and as such I know I
wouldn't be able to use maven.
6. Contribute to the code. I have tried to get a foot in the door in
order to fix some of my own critisisms, but the lack of javadocs mean
that I really can't do this other than for some simple plugins. That
is unless I had lots of time to spare which I don't. In turn that
makes me concerned how the project will attract other developers to
move things along quickly.
I realize there may be workarounds for some of the above, but I
couldn't stick my neck on the line for a dev team and recommend
sharing of eclipse hack scripts etc as a way of working. I'm also
putting my selfish hat on and say that I'd like to do the above
without defending it - there are a few threads on this list already
that deal with the pros and cons.
***************************************
Now I'll turn my attention to Ivy. I've began to look at this product
and it seems to offer many of the features of Maven including
1. transitive dependencies
2. compatibility with the ibiblio repository
and in addition
1. the online docs are excellent even if they are in broken english
2. Can manage projects from with eclipse, since they are just ant
projects (with simple projects, haven't tried anything tricky)
3. Can manage maven style module directory structures or single
source trees. Obviously being Ant, it can manage any structure you
like, but these are the only two sane ones I know.
Yes there is stuff that it doesn't have such as a built in lifecycle,
but with what I've learnt from the maven layout, I feel I could quite
easily replicate that in ant in a reusable way. That said I would
prefer not to have to. I suppose I'm looking for reassurance as to
why Maven is the way to go because there seems to be considerable
overlap with Ivy.
****************************************
I realize that I am being very selfish here, but I have to think very
carefully about what I invest my time in. Maven has all the hallmarks
of being that software that I felt was missing during my career,
which is why I care enough about it to spare the time for these
critisisms. I just want to be sure it has a chance of gaining
critical mass.
Maybe the gatekeeper/guardian of this project needs to write some
sort of Jerry Maguire style memo that says what Maven's purpose is
and plans are so that we can all keep focused on that.
Maybe my views aren't representative of a large enough demographic in
which case this email will just slip away into obscurity, but either
way thanks for reading and please don't take it as a troll
-AW
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
