Hello, As you can read at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/ *" J2SE 1.4.2 is in its Java Technology End of Life (EOL) transition period*. The EOL transition period began Dec, 11 2006 and will complete October 30th, 2008"
I don't think we have plan yet to release maven 2.1, so I think it would be a valid to require java 1.5 as minimal runtime. Main beneficts (IMHO) : - annotation can replace javadoc-style IoC an Maven plugin declarations (code allready available : http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Java+5+Annotations+for+Plugins) - jsr-250 annotations can replace some plexus interfaces ( LogEnabled -> @Resource('log') , Initializable --> @PostConstruct ...) and make component more "standard" and accessible to developpers without plexus knowledge. - generics can make the maven model more comprehensible. The current "Collection project.getArtifacts()" is not really clear and the fiew available javadoc don't help a lot. Other possible improvements : - plugin test tool could use jUnit 4 runners to create something comparable to spring-test-context : annotate your plugin test class with @Runwith( "MavenPluginTestRunner" ) @Pom( "myTestPom.xml" ) and the test will prepare the plugin set in the test pom and inject it in the test class. - benefict from java.util.concurrent to do some tasks in parallel ? Example : dependencies downloading - any other ? WDYT ? Nicolas.