Hello there,
I am working on Maven 2 for quite a while now. I like the tool a lot, it
helps the developers -and- the project leads. It is a real gift.
I feel however that there is a (major?) issue with the propery management in
Maven. In both the concept and the implementation.
{settings.xml}
The settings.xml seems to be the perfect place to put certain values
specificly for one (single) user for several projects. Examples of such a
settings would be a SUbversion username or a database password. Also the
settings.xml could contain specific proxy host and port values (and
authentication data for that single user).
{profiles.xml}
It is obvious that the settings.xml can not contain data for one single
project. I feel that there must be specific file containing the different
values per project. Indeed, the profiles.xml can be used to specify project
specific properties. Sadly one can not use:
myproperty = abc=def
The the model parser will throw exceptions. One has to use the
<myproperty><![CDATA[abc=def]]></myproperty> in stead.
This is not a good way to specify properties, I believe.
Also, property handling is not very powerful. When specifying 4 properties:
<database-type>mysql</database-type>
<database-host>localhost</database-host>
<database-port>3306</database-port>
<database-name>foobar</database-name>
And trying to use these properties in the same profile:
<database-url>
jdbc:${database-type}://${database-host}:${database-port}/${database-name}
</databse-url>
The ${database-url} would return jdbc:null://null:null/null
{model needs improvement}
Also the profile.xml model is tiny. A profile only contains properties and
activation elements (and reposiotories - but they do not take part in this
property handling topic). This is far too little: it would be good to be
able to specify much more in a profile (almost as much as in a regular om
model, I would assume). Also conditional execution would be handy in the
profile.xml.
Say we are building a war that should run on several application servers.
One could specify several plugins to start|stop|deploy|undeploy the web
server or activate or deactivate the built application in the pom.xml. This
would result in a pom.xml that is too big and incomplete. It would be much
nicer to be able to add plugins when certain properties are set. For
example, one could specify webserver.name = jetty6x in a
${project.name}.properties file (or in the upgraded profile.xml). When
such a file read by Maven (before processing the pom.xml) the pom could be
filled with extra (conditional) plugins following the guidelines in the
${project.name}.properties (or profiles.xml) file.
The same example can be given regarding database access.
[I know some issues could arrise as specified in
http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-profiles.html,
at the 'profile pitfalls' section. Solution can be found for this.]
Many property handling issues (related to this rant) can be found:
http://www.nabble.com/-m2-property-filtering-at-runtime-question-t1296364.html#a3451790
http://www.nabble.com/conditionally-loading-property-files-t1412492.html#a3806540
http://www.nabble.com/Maven-2.0.4-problem-with-properties-t1445796.html#a3905175
http://www.nabble.com/maven-2-specify-properties-file-t461893.html#a1260787
http://www.nabble.com/Maven-properties-inside-java-code-t209452.html#a584456
Maven 2 is indeed much cleaner, more elegant and more powerful, but Ant's
property management is plainly better designed and implemented, I believe.
Any remarks on this?
I might be totally of mark. Am I?
Jan
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