On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Eric Kolotyluk <eric.koloty...@gmail.com> wrote: > Maybe this is too weird, but > > Has anyone ever used Maven as an installation tool? > > I've been thinking using Maven as a way to install and update software, and > before I actually go and experiment with the idea I was wondering if other > people have already thought of this. The idea would be that you have a > simple bootstrap installer that installs and/or updates Maven first. Once > Maven is installed/verified, you could then use it to pull down the rest of > the solution artifacts from the network and then integrate them into the end > solution. Over time you use the same mechanism to assist in software > upgrades. > > I suspect some people already do something like this for enterprise web > applications, but I was thinking of something like a desktop application.
Sonatype do some black magic for provision developer desktops, check their website. There was a demo I saw that pulled down your Eclipse binaries and installing plugins and did some configuration stuff. I believe that the bundling of the artifacts for provisioning live in Nexus - not sure if its a p2 or maven repository. As the other thread "Is Maven the Answer" says you may be better off with a pure scripting language or Ant if you want to do non build-lifecycle event handling. Getting Maven to do what you are suggesting is not going to be simply a matter of hooking assembly plugin together with some dependencies. You are probably going to have to develop a plugin - at which point you have to wonder whether it fits into the idea of Maven's lifecycle (and I suggest not). If you are running on Windows tools like SCCM do the installation management for you. Is it worth rolling your own? --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@maven.apache.org
