In my opinion, Maven2 is great and has clear immediate benefits - even
if it can not do everything that may be needed for everyone.
However, there are many small problems. I have found that whatever I
start in Maven that is not 100% standard, I run into problems that cost
me hours. Basic things often don't work as expected, and some simple
things are not supported at all (sorry, I don't want to be negative, and
I really like Maven, but this is simply my experience with Maven so
far). For example,
- if you want to use Maven to create a project tree, your tree can not
include empty directories. But at the start of the project, most project
trees have some empty directories. Why isn't it possible in Maven?
- it is not possible to use the assembly plugin to simply copy files
into some target directory structure that is not version dependent.
- I tried running the javadoc plugin. My package-info.java files were
ignored. So I was not able to use Maven there.
- filters only work on resources and source files. Why can't I specify
that they work on any directory?
- I need to customize the build life-cycle/artifact types, because some
of my projects are not standard. This looks quite complicated and needs
to be simplified.
- It is not clear which POM properties you can use where. For example,
the POM has a description element and I would expect that I could
include that easily in my generated web site. But I have not found a way
to incorporate it into a .apt page. In addition, the description is used
for generating the jar manifest - but the jar plugin will crash when
linefeeds are included in the description element. That should not be
the case.
These are just a few of my really little problems. And maybe there are
ways in the mean time to solve some of them. But each of these problems
takes time and unfortunately there is a significant lack in
documentation. I find myself browsing the source code and JIRA much too
often.
Overall the question whether Maven is production ready is difficult to
answer. Maven brings you a lot important concepts for improving the
build process; it pays off to get started working with it. But I would
switch larger teams and projects over to Maven only after going through
a gradual learning process. In my opinion, any team would benefit from
having someone get acquainted with Maven. That person would gradually
infuse the team with Maven concepts. E.g. set up a repository,
standardize the directory structure, standardize pieces of the build
process. Then, when the person is sure that Maven supports everything
that is necessary, the whole project can switch over. For some projects,
Maven is ready now, for others it may take a little more time.
But eventually Maven will be the way to go.
-Alexander
Nitko2 wrote:
The issue doesn't need to be a blocker to slow down someone. The
problem is in a number of issues.
And from user point it isn't important is it a core or plugin issue. I
tried to move from maven 1 to maven 2. I started from the scratch and
whatever I touch I found either a bug or lack of complete
documentation or some strange design-programming decisions.
So for me it was a kind of slalom between non-blocker issues.
At first I tried to compensate with ant scripts, but now I imported
maven into eclipse and use code as documentation. Of course I tried to
run maven inside eclipse with embedder, but I just bumped to another
problem.
Anyway things started moving for me when I imported maven code into
eclipse so I can see what plugins are doing, and I can change them if
I found some behaviour buggy or illogical (at least illogical to me).
I just done a search in JIRA and it showed(all statuses) 127 bugs, 37
improvements for 2.x versions. Many of those bugs are manifested in
different ways.
So, I use maven 2 because I really like the concept, but it isn't
production ready, or at least it wasn't when I started using it(a
month before 2.0).
That's my opinion.
Brett Porter wrote:
I think some heavy clarifications need to be put on this.
If you are moving from Ant, or starting a new project, there is every
chance Maven 2 is ready for production use for you.
I feel this is entirely about the plugins. There are a bunch of
plugins written for Maven 1.x (many outside of the Maven project),
that some people have come to depend on that limit the ability to
upgrade. To a lesser extent, there are some Maven project plugins that
are not yet finished. I think this mostly revolves around the site
generation, which is being worked on right now.
I'm not sure what core issues are being referred to - but I don't
recall seeing anything marked as a blocker for some time (the 6 in
JIRA are for the ant tasks, the embedder, and design issues for 2.1 -
none of which are under discussion here).
Another factor is a large investment in custom Maven 1.x scripts
within some organisations. That's not something Maven 2 can do a lot
about, and is a trade off for the person upgrading.
Hope this helps in clarifying it. It's important that anyone who says
it is not yet ready for production states a reason so we can focus on
improving that experience.
Cheers,
Brett
On 12/21/05, David Jackman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I didn't attend JavaPolis (sounds like I missed out), but I have been
working for a few weeks to move our Maven 1 projects to Maven 2. At
this point I would agree that Maven 2 is not quite ready for prime
time.
It's getting closer, though. I've found problems (both in the core and
in plugins) and tried to create patches when I file the jira issues, so
hopefully Maven 2 will do what we need it to before too much longer. I
doubt it will really be ready before 2.1, though I'm not sure what the
timeframe of that release is (hopefully it's enough time for me to
finish my migration and file fixes for the problems I encountered along
the way).
..David..
-----Original Message-----
From: Rik Bosman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 1:15 AM
To: Maven Users List
Subject: [m2] production ready? any experience?
Hi Everyone,
Some colleages of mine visited javapolis. Vincent Massol told there
that
"maven2 is not production ready" (if I rephrase it correctly).
- When will it be production ready? 2.02? 2.1?
- Are there any stories from developers using maven2 in production?
I'm a maven2 fan, and I hope to adopt it for our company soon.
Regards,
Rik Bosman
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