Maven: A Solution Looking For A Problem? (was: Abusing Maven For Fun Or Profit)

Harold Meder wrote:
> Wow! 45 people came out to hear Brian Sletten talk about how he was 
> able to "tweak" Maven 2 to automate deploying application upgrades to 
> 2000 installations.  These strategies can be used to automate the 
> distribution of your applications.
>
>
Dang, wish I could have made it to that meeting.  I'll admit to being 
*very* skeptical of Maven, and I'd have been interested to ask and see 
how many people are using Maven,
and - more to the point  - how many like it.  My own experience with 
Maven leads to me to consider it an over-engineered POS and a "solution 
looking for a problem" but
it seems to be very popular for whatever reason. 

For my money,  when you need something this complicated to change your 
compiler compliance level:

<plugins>
    <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.5</source>
                    <target>1.5</target>
                    <excludes>
                        <exclude>**/*Point*.java</exclude>
                    </excludes>
                </configuration>
             </plugin>
         </plugins>


you have a problem.

What do the rest of you think? Do you all find value in Maven? If so, 
what and why?  Any Maven haters care to chime in with a "dissenting 
opinion?"

Also, FWIW, for anybody who mainly cares about the dependency management 
aspect, have you considered Ant+Ivy instead of Maven?


TTYL,


Phil

-- 
http://www.linkedin.com/in/philliprhodes

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