Have been following this thread with interest. One of my biggest issues with maven 2 is that the documentation is very poor. Yes, I know there is a book on it, but I did not find the book very helpful...
The maven book takes a far too high level approach and does not give detailed instructions on how to use particular plugins. For instance, I was looking at getting a maven to build, test and deploy a site with a few basic reports - jdepends, checkstyle and javadoc. It was in fact very difficult. I had to post to the group to find out how to download jdepends. A simple, step by step, "getting started with maven 2" or "maven 2 by example", is the kind of thing I think is required. The maven book while valuable is not as hands on as I'd like, nor does it give any details about how to use particular plugins. The maven 2 documentation in general is not great. Some kind of wiki/cms approach would I feel be the best way to improve this situation. i.e. let the community contribute to the documentation. The head knowledge is definitely out there, this mailing list bears testimony to that. One area where I think things can be greatly improved is in documentation on the settings.xml - yes, there is a page on it, but it is not very detailed. A sample settings.xml would be a good start. Maven is a great tool, it would be a pity to slow its adoption because of documentation, especially as the knowledge is out there. Michael Wiles Java Developer Disclaimer Sanlam Life Insurance Limited Reg no 1998/021121/06 - Licensed Financial Services Provider Disclaimer and Directors
