Pierre is right to be cautious.
It is not just s swap of one build program for another.
There is a real change in the way one looks at software applications.
The current mixup with the dependencies would be much harder to do under
Maven.
Moving to Maven would almost certainly require that this be fixed.
The software parts of the project would probably have to be restructured
into a much more cleanly layered set of dependencies.
One would want to look at the structure of seed data and the whole
process of installing OFBiz.
One would also want to look at the Framework as a separate product (if
the community wants to promote this use of OFBiz) and set that up as a
separate deliverable with a separate build structure that produces a jar
of code and a process to deliver and install the seed data required for
a non-ERP application to call on the Framework as a dependency.
This would have many advantages for building custom ERPs based on OFBiz
but would require some work and consensus building that might be hard to
say the least.
Ron
On 20/04/2015 2:58 PM, Pierre Smits wrote:
Quoting: 'why change in the first place'. That is one of the most important
question, perhaps even 'the most important'.... And it seems, that one
isn't answered to the fullest.
I like: if it aint broken, don't try to fix it'. But also 'a square peg
doesn't fit in a round hole'. Is our current build mechanism broken? Is our
current mechanism a square peg?
But beyond that: have we fully explored the all/other paths? We currently
have following options: Ant+IVY, Groovy/Gradle, Maven. They are all 'build'
solutions (at least according to their sites, but the writers of any of
those pages could be disregarded as experts). But there are also Apache
Buildr and Continiuum, according to this site listing options:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_build_automation_software.
Should we explore inviting the real experts (those of all these tools) to
share their insights, so that we can base the decision on real information
than just conjecture/limited experiences?
And on another and related aspect: how much effort would the benefit of
each option require to have it fully operational for OFBiz? That should
help determination too.
Best regards,
Pierre Smits
*ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
Services & Solutions for Cloud-
Based Manufacturing, Professional
Services and Retail & Trade
http://www.orrtiz.com
On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 7:00 PM, David E. Jones <d...@me.com> wrote:
That gets back to the question of why change in the first place... build
files may be smaller and easier to maintain, but there may not be a good
reason!
-David
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwhee...@artifact-software.com
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
