Hello all, I have pondered a tad about the usability, applicability and underpinnings of Maven's current way to release artifacts [including source and javadoc JARs] and sites. I feel that a lot of the confusion posted to diverse mailing lists and forums originates in the release plugin, the site plugin and the slush of required configuration noted in the pom, settings.xml and plugin <configuration> sections.
It could be that Maven-Release-Plugin and Maven-Site-Plugin try to be too generic or use too complex underpinnings. For example, we have a Maven/VCS integration framework - but it seems that the vast majority of devs only ever use this functionality during releases (and, thus, indirectly through the maven-release-plugin). Moreover, since Maven (or some of its core plugins) assume a SVN-centric view of the world, some Maven/VCS operations done during release seem to work poorly or requiring much repetitive configuration for DVCSs. All - not most - devs I have spoken to prefer using the native VCS client for their daily work over Maven's VCS integration, implying that we might define the scope of the Maven/VCS integration to fit the release and CI use case instead of being a generic VCS integration into Maven (which is not used other than in the release cases anyways?). Could we simplify the release process and the configuration for Maven-Release-Plugin and Maven-Site-Plugin by making and reacting to a few assumptions? Here goes: 1. The vast majority of Devs/CIs use Maven/SCM integration mainly for checkout and release (which implies mainly tag, commit, checkin/push) operations. These operations are used mainly for checking out/pulling and releasing artifacts. 2. We should investigate simplifying the configuration used for the release process, potentially by simplifying the SCM layer to cater only for the operations used within its main use case (i.e. the release process). 3. We should investigate simplifying the configuration used for releasing a site - including relativization and aggregation - either by documenting the process better or perhaps narrowing down the amount of input formats to potentially remove the use of Doxia altogether? (After all, there are quite a few good markup/HTML editors out there, and much more reference literature on HTML than ... say ... APT). Simplification and usability improvements are - in my view - always Good Things(tm). What do you think? -- +==============================+ | Bästa hälsningar, | [sw. "Best regards"] | | Lennart Jörelid | EAI Architect & Integrator | | jGuru Europe AB | Mölnlycke - Kista | | Email: l...@jguru.se | URL: www.jguru.se | Phone | (skype): jgurueurope | (intl): +46 708 507 603 | (domestic): 0708 - 507 603 +==============================+
