Chas, i feel your pains, so here a list of my own recommendations:
1. Get a maven-proxy in place, so when a central repo is down, you can
switch to
a another mirror without user notice. Set up maven-proxy is not that
hard ;-)
check out archive list for all maven-proxy discussion. Feel free to
ping us for help
2. Dont use snapshot, cut a release yourself. I fetch the source and
post fix the version
with svn revision number. For example, if I need a feature/bug fix
in maven-assembly-plugin
version 2.2-snapshot, then I build 2.2-${svn.revision} and deploy to
your
internal repository that can serve by maven-proxy.
3. Use pluginManagement to specify all plugins that used by your
project'poms.
This get your team's build much faster since it does not have to go
to maven-proxy to look
for daily update.
This settup will prevent most of maven's uncertainties that others and I
have gone thru
Hope it helps
-D
On 5/25/06, Chas Douglass <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I really liked the idea of Maven2 when I heard about it, and when a
fellow developer used it successfully to build a small library for me, I
thought it was time to jump in.
Three weeks later I have managed to accomplish very little on my
project, and I've converted four simple Ant build files into 7 Maven
pom.xml's that, by and large, don't work.
THE IMPLEMENTATION PROBLEMS
To advertise Maven 2 as "stable" is, I believe, a disservice to
developers. In my experience with it, "early beta" would be a kind
description.
After struggling for the first week with broken links and dead-ends on
the web pages, I subscribed to the users list and found out there is a
"secret" book that documents much of Maven (ok, it's not really secret,
but should I really have to subscribe to a mailing list to find out
there is more documentation?).
Of course, the secret book also documents features that aren't released
yet (wagon is what bit me). Perhaps that's why it's secret.
So now I'm using a "stable" product (incorporating several unreleased
and poorly documented snapshots) and what happens? New releases of a
number of modules come out and everything breaks! Have I specified a
release where I shouldn't have? Have I NOT specified a release where I
SHOULD have? Based on the limited traffic of the problem on the user's
list, I can only conclude that most people that use Maven are building
the plugins/modules and that very few people actually use it to build
applications.
THE DESIGN PROBLEMS
But my real beef comes to design decisions that I think needs some
serious consideration.
MAVEN HIDES TOO MUCH.
It really is nice advertising to say "Look! This 12 line pom.xml builds
this huge project". But that's only if you happen to want to do EXACTLY
that ONE thing (which seems to be: build a Maven plugin). The real
world is more complicated. And as soon as I want to get more
complicated, Maven obliges me by getting WAY more complicated. Most of
this complication is due to, I believe, hiding too much from me.
Why is it that I'm expected, as a developer, to be able to download and
compile snapshots of plugins that aren't released yet (the jnlp plugin),
but I'm not expected to understand a FULL LIFE CYCLE build file?
You have this wonderful archetype mechanism, why don't you use it to
make a pom.xml that actually includes information for everything it
does? This would be self-documenting to developers. Isn't the target
audience developers?
I believe Maven is hiding the actual build structure, and that that is a
bad thing.
I have used a number of open source projects where the configuration
file is used to document the product! It is MUCH more enlightening to
see a comment with a commented-out section than, well, nothing.
An example: I use Java 1.5. The Maven default is 1.4. Can I simply
search for "1.4" in the pom.xml and change it to "1.5". Nooooo. I have
to research which plugin actually sets this value, how it sets this
value, and add 9 lines to my pom.xml (assuming I did not yet have any
plugins configuration).
THE CENTRAL REPOSITORY PROBLEM
I think the second major design problem is the central repository. As
evidenced by the hardware failure at codehaus.org, this is a
single-point-of-failure that is simply unacceptable in real world build
situations.
Not only does it represent a single-point-of-failure, it's not frozen.
I could never see my company using Maven unless we set up our own
version of the repository, and probably only if we used it exclusively,
since we require complete build reproducibility. Relying on an external
organization to not make "secret" updates (as has been recently
discussed) is simply unacceptable. I haven't tried to set up a
"central" repository, but from scanning messages on the user's list, it
sounds somewhat less than well defined.
Personally (for open-source projects), I can probably use it, but there
is going to be a nagging suspicion when something breaks.
So, for small users it represents a roadblock when the repository is
unavailable, and for large users it represents a reproducibility problem.
CONCLUSION:
I think Maven is just "not ready for prime time". I really want to like
it. I think there are some great ideas, and clearly some really smart
people working on it.
I hope this rant can be taken constructively. I want projects like this
to succeed, I really do.
And, please, I understand I'm one person. This is MY view of attempting
to use Maven to build MY projects. Perhaps I'm just not the target
audience. Perhaps I'm just out in left field. Perhaps I've just missed
the point completely.
Chas Douglass
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