+1 on Santiago's comments. Given that this is a community project, the use of a tool such as Maven should be based on what works and general consensus. I also would add that this should not be cast as a right/wrong, good/evil discussion. The use of any tool adds value to a project only when it increases productivity and/or ease of use (in this case, download/build/install/run). Maven does simplify fetching external resources (although this could be done in subversion as well) and managing dependencies. OTOH, the current situation demonstrates that this tool only adds value when "everything is right" and can be impediment as a project changes/evolves. As long as the interested parties to this effort feel that the current thrashing will not be repeated in a "business as usual" sense going forward, then Maven should be an acceptable tool for the project. If change is going to be constant (for the foreseeable future), and given Maven's inherent weaknesses, now is a good time to consider the alternatives and validate the belief that this tool can be managed effectively.
Michael On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 4:08 AM, Santiago Gala <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > El mié, 23-04-2008 a las 17:53 +0100, Ian Boston escribió: > > I was wondering after the recent rapid changes in the build, how much > > ' stomach ' people had for sorting out the dependency and plugin > > management in the build to bring it more inline with something like > > http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/jackrabbit/trunk/pom.xm > > <rant> > I have vetoed maven in all the occasions I have had (and got ignored > most of the times just because it was "cool and what everyone was > using") because of several reasons: > - bad documentation and unstable/changing features/behaviors > - transparent download of "thingies" (I don't know or care what) that > makes it difficult to work offline without having to remember strange > switches > - transparent download of dependencies that makes it difficult to assess > dependencies (IMO an esencial part of Software Engineering, and > something that should never be abstracted away) > - very stateful under the hood (oh, you just remove the repository > directory / oh, you just reboot windows ...) > - a tool that uses "install" just for storing things for internal use is > crearly self-centered, not task or user centered > - extreme verbosity for useless information and silence about important > things, i.e., it talks a lot about what it does, but nothing about what > I do with it, something that always irritate me a lot. > - ugly XML and confusing declarative stuff, something shared with ant > - unnatural targets, where the default is always exactly what you don't > want (it remembers me wordperfect on this one) > - mostly always can't deal properly with dependencies, requiring "clean" > quite often > - it is very resource heavy, compare with make or ant > - it is written in java, a proprietary language with no legal OS > implementation that the ASF is having problems to turn into free > software because of nasty business practices (breach of contract) by Sun > Microsystems, and that I think will break in the same way as OpenSolaris > at the first governance conflict because of Sun's predatory practices of > late. This means that a pure free shindig install, using the PHP code > for the server, will still need to use java or duplicate the build > system. > </rant> > > I have been learning to tolerate it as a bare user, as "it is cool and > what everybody else uses" but I will never dig into it, use it in any > project where I can avoid it, or help making maven builds as a form of > civil resistance, much like when I abandoned windows for linux in 2000. > > So don't count on me on this one. I'll just use, and bitch about, > whatever other people sets there. :) > > So please, do it and make mvn the most invisible part of the project if > possible. :) Having like 70% of the resources of the project going to > trying to deal with maven for a couple of weeks just to do a simple > restructuring of the build system is wasteful. > > Regards > Santiago > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
