On Feb 4, 2008, at 6:14 PM, Dan Fabulich wrote:
Jan Nielsen wrote:
Finding the definitive help information for a plugin should be
absolutely trivial and built-in; having the CLI option which give
the code-you-are-executing-right-now the ability to answer that
question avoids the issues we have today with multiple sources for
a plugin with different HTML usage information.
Have you tried "mvn help:describe -Dplugin=nifty -Dmojo=nifty -
Dfull"? I think we already have what you want, but we've yet again
failed to document it adequately. (Try it with -Dplugin=compiler -
Dmojo=compile.)
I'm sorry, hold on... starting stopwatch.... "mvn help:describe -
Dplugin=nifty -Dmojo=nifty -Dfull" - alright, I type fast, but that
took me 10 seconds. Then I hit enter and a whole *crapload* of
information zoomed past. Ok, CTRL-R, mvn, adding a "| less". Ok,
for something like "help:describe", I'm looking at eight or nine pages
of sleep inducing variable names.
I'm serious the help plugin hurts, go back to what Jason said about
svn doing a better job.
And while I'm at it, and relatedly, whatever happened to "-G" to
get me a list of all plugins???
I never used 1.x, but I don't think that makes sense any more. We
could certainly provide a list of all valid lifecycle phases (and we
should do so in the help plugin), since those are static and don't
change.
http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the-lifecycle.html
But as for finding plugins, it's better to search the Internet for
that sort of thing, rather than trying to turn the Maven core into
an Internet search engine for Maven plugins. (Similarly, wouldn't
it be cool if you could use a simple Maven command-line switch to
search for jars you could use in your project? Wait, no it
wouldn't; that's what Google is for.)
Dan, can I quote you on "It's better to search the Internet for that
sort of thing" the next time I have to defend Maven to some end-user
who is absolutely enraged by the fact that they've had to spend the
last fourteen hours trying to track down the reason why the dependency
plugin they have installed doesn't support the tree goal even though
the documentation on the Maven site tells them to run it (Hint: they
don't have the right version)
No one is saying they want Maven to be the "Internet Search Engine"
for plugins. Maybe someone is saying, "what we have now isn't
adequate". Seconded.
And I might as well chuck in: why in the world do I need to do "mvn
nifty:nifty" and not just "mvn nifty"?
Because that way we don't have to guess whether you're trying to run
a goal or a lifecycle phase. "install" is a great example. Do you
just want to run the install:install goal, or did you want to run
every lifecycle phase up through the install phase?
Makes sense. But, wait, in that help:describe, you didn't call it a
"goal", the property was a "mojo"? I guess what Mavenland has to
get over is that "users" don't know what a Mojo is? They shouldn't
be expected to know what a "Mojo" is, you should be able to use Maven
without knowing very much about it.
-Dan
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