The frustrations users, including myself, are feeling stems from Maven's complexity. When things work, we love it! It's pretty. It does tons. It gives us a warm, happy feeling and showcases our work very professionally.
When things go wrong though, they go seriously wrong. Maven adds many, many layers of abstraction (XML, XSL, Jelly, properties files, POM) so that if things are *exactly* the way Maven wants them, you get very, very hard to diagnose errors. My experiences with HiveMind have been great; I started with Maven and kept things Maven-y, and the result is just what I want. I still haven't been able to break through on Tapestry, which needs to be a multiproject. I'm waiting for the RC binaries (because I've never been able to build Maven from source) before I try again. -- Howard M. Lewis Ship Creator, Tapestry: Java Web Components http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/sandbox/hivemind/ http://javatapestry.blogspot.com > -----Original Message----- > From: Michal Maczka [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 11:10 AM > To: 'Maven Users List' > Subject: RE: Usability issues & general ranting > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Berin Loritsch > > Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 4:20 PM > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: Re: Usability issues & general ranting > > > > Michal Maczka wrote: > > > > > > > >> > > >>>The original author does need to learn that open source > coding is > > >>>not created out of some desire to 'sell' a product to > lots and lots > > >>>of people, but to satisfy the itch of the people involved. > > >> > > >>There is some truth here. However, an open-source > project's success > > >>is just as much judged by its audience as any other > project. And a > > >>top level apache project would have more ambition than this I > > >>thought. > > > > > > > > > Yeah are right. "Our vision" should be dropped and we should > implement > > > every single stupid feature then is requested and do this even if > those > > > features are in mutual contradiction. And the most > frequent request > is: > > > "you guys should be like ant". This is not hard thing to > do. We will > > > simply remove files from our CVS repository and import files from > Ant > > > repository replacing every occurrence of word "ant" with > "maven". If > > > this is what will make people happy we should listen to > them! Don't > we? > > > > > > > > > Michal, this isn't helpful. > How can I be helpful? No question how to use/port to Maven was asked! > > >I understand your point, but there are > > better ways of stating it. It is important though to learn the > strengths > > and weaknesses of what you are being compared to so that you can set > up > > and > > maintain an "appologetics" page. "Appologetics" is the study of > defending > > your position. > > > > What do you recognize as the strengths of ANT? What are its > weaknesses? > > How does Maven leverage the strengths and minimize the weaknesses? > > > > > Exactly that's the point! > What one might call "strengths" other might call "weakness". > And in case of Maven it is often a case as some conscious > choices are taken as design flaws. For me #1 strengths of > maven is that it promotes RAD as you > don't have to write your build system from scratch - you can > build it from components. But to use maven you have to > scarify some amount of freedom. And this is #1 weakness for > some people. I don't think we can do anything about it > without compromising fundamental goals of the project. One > have to understand what he looses and what he gets in order > to answer the question: do I want to use Maven. > The same applies e.g. to EJB, Hibernate ...and life in general. > Every stick has two ends. > > Often people who start to use Maven after trying "hardly" to > bent it to previously structured project with some wacky > build system (with ant you can certainly develop a very nice > build system!) and they complain about Maven capabilities. > This does not mean that Maven should be "improved" just to > allow those people replace Ant or whatever else with maven. > Such people in such situation should stay away from Maven as > it will bring to them more frustration then fruits. > > EOT from my side! > > > Michal > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
