I've been following the responses on the user list. I'd say based on the various points brought up by the users that platform encoding as the default makes the most sense. Most people aren't having issues with this currently and teams that are dealing with encoding issues across their developers will have to deal with it anyway (outside of Maven) and setting an encoding value in the pom won't be a big deal. Once the plugins pay attention to this new encoding value, it should work for everyone.
-----Original Message----- From: Brian E. Fox [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 9:08 AM To: Maven Developers List Subject: RE: POM Element for Source File Encoding >> Is there an issue with a huge number of votes attached to it? >To my knowledge, no. We have MNG-2216 that is quite similar to our proposal >but has (excluding myself) only three other votes which is not that much. >Let my point out that the encoding issue is subtle and I expect a fair >amount of people that are simply not aware of it, i.e. their builds work >just by coincidence. This is fine, but if we make a change that suddenly breaks everyone's builds, then they will be out screaming. >> This is certainly relevant when asking for a change as fundamental as >> this. If a handful of people have issues with this, but everyone else is >> ok with platform default, then this is an important deciding factor. >Of course user's sense is important but there is also the question where the >PMC would like its baby to go. For example, I see parallels to the question >whether the Maven 2.1 POM should require explicit versions for plugins. It >would guarantee stable builds but no doubt there will be users complaining >about the need to touch their POMs. There's a huge difference between this and the plugin versions....specifically the groundswell of user feedback asking for a solution to plugins changing at random times. > Anything we do that causes behavior changes will have to wait until 2.1, > we simply cannot allow this kind of change in 2.0.x. <snip> >So it's not about switching from Maven 2.0.x to >Maven 2.1 but from Plugin x.y to x.y+1 which I feel is the same step. This makes me even more concerned. Given the chance to do it right and make things stable, I'll pick that choice every time, but if it's going to break lots of people's builds and no one is really asking for it, then that's a big risk without much reward.
