[ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ] Note to plexus lovers : CONTROVERSAL PROPOSAL, please don't blame me and just give good arguments ! [ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ]
Maven is built on Plexus. This lightweight container is used (afaik) for : - simple (javadoc) annotation-based programming model - lifecycle management - dependency injection - classloader isolation for plugins (using classworld) Let's now consider the today responses to the same requirements : - Since Java5, annotations are common, and JSR-250 introduces standard annotations that can address some basic lifecycle and IoC requirements. - The IoC container ecosystem is dominated by Springframework. Maybe not the best technical one for any reason, but the best documented and most know by developers. - Classloader isolation is very well adressed by OSGi, with the advantage of beeing a recognized standard, with many documentation AND business interest. Maybe Plexus was a very advanced container when it was created, but it did not become the today 1rst choice technology. Considering an opensource tool like maven is built by volunteers developers, it would be a good thing to attract talentuous ones to use up-to-date and well known technologies. As an example, Archiva (trunk) is migrating to Spring as it's IoC container. Could we consider for future maven version (let's say 2.2, or "3.0" - as 2.1 is allready in advanced development phase) to replace plexus with a combination of Java5 + Spring + OSGi ? Nicolas.
