On Sep 8, 2006, at 6:19 AM, Frank Budinsky wrote:
Well, even the most fanatical VI user I know has moved to using an
Eclipse
VI plugin now, so I really can't imagine very many (other than
people that
also spend their weekends carving wheels out of stone :-) really
using it
these days. As far as Emacs is concerned, I must admit that I
myself still
use it when I'm doing bulk editing (my fingers just automatically hit
those ctrl keys), but it's not my IDE (it's just an editor). I know
that
Emacs is still used as a Java IDE by a few people, but not very many.
I'm sure we could discuss the pros and cons of various tools
indefinitely,
but the bottom line is that Eclipse is used by LOTS of people, not
just a
few. Jeremy may not want to alienate non-Eclipse users, but
avoiding that
by alienating the large (Eclipse users) group doesn't make sense
either.
Jim, you said this:
If we find that Maven consistently
causes problems for a wide variety of developers, then we should
change to something better.
But more sensible would be to say "causes problems for a large
percentage
of developers", which is the case.
I don't know exactly how to handle this, but just saying all you crazy
Eclipse users are on your own, isn't going to help. I don't think
Jeremy's
portrayal of Eclipse as some piece of junk with an ongoing stream of
problems is really the case either, it just seems to me that the
bottom
line is that Eclipse has a few problems integrating with Maven that
need
to be addressed. I'm sure both the Eclipse and Maven communities
have a
vested interest in seeing that happen.
I guess I touched a nerve here and I will turn down the Eclipse
teasing (well at least a little).
I do think Eclipse has issues coping with Maven project structures -
the two tools have different ideas on how things should be arranged,
each wanting to do things its own way. I'm sure the Maven and Eclipse
communities will address the differences over time but until that
happens we need to make our own accommodations. As a project we
needed to pick a primary and we chose Maven as the build system. We
can re-examine that decision but I think that should be a separate
discussion.
This leaves us with a recurring problem in that someone making
changes to the Maven build has no easy way to validate that they
won't break someone else's IDE setup (irrespective of which IDE it
is). I'm really looking for a solution for this that does not involve
installing any particular IDE.
One solution is to check in IDE-specific artifacts on the
understanding they are not normative. However, I share Jim's concern
that people stop running the project's Maven build and only use the
IDE (for example, someone recently told me the build was broken
because it failed in Eclipse although it worked fine with Maven).
Alternatively the same artifacts could be checked into another
location. I know that would work for IDEA, I don't know if Eclipse
supports such a setup. We still need to ensure developers run the
main build.
Another common approach in open source projects is just to say
everyone is responsible for their own IDE setup. We won't
deliberately try to break things, but the common ground is our
project build (Maven) and IDE users have to adapt.
All of these have their downsides so if anyone has another
alternative please speak up (but please don't tell me to install
Eclipse).
--
Jeremy
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