Re: Maven: A Solution Looking For A Problem?

My experience with Maven has been mixed. Initially, I found it complex 
and poorly documented, and I just didn't 'get' the value of it -- why 
not just right an Ant script. It definitely failed the 5 minute rule for 
me. But then I listened to episode #70 of the Java Posse 
(http://javaposse.com/index.php?post_id=112128) which was an interview 
with Bret Porter who works on the Maven project. I was intrigued enough 
that I decided to take another look, and set to working on Maven-izing 
one of my projects. I found that I quickly ran in to some "exceptional" 
cases like the one mentioned below (in my case it was that my source 
path didn't follow the Maven convention -- convention over configuration 
!). This did perturb me a bit, but I kept plugging away and I was very 
impressed with what I ended up with. Maven managed all of my 
dependencies for me. Almost for free I got a project web site with many 
useful reports (PMD, Findbug, javadocs, source xref). I also got nearly 
free continuous integration, originally using Continuum, and then later 
Hudson which also builds my project web site on a regular schedule.

I also have the ability to generate project configuration for Eclipse or 
Netbeans automatically with all of the dependencies properly configured. 
I can just type mvn eclipse:eclipse and it will generate all my project 
configuration automatically. No more need to check in IDE specific 
configuration into the source repository, nor do I need to spend 20 
minutes configuring a project's dependencies everytime I want to bring a 
new copy into my IDE.

I also found that once I got the configuration working for one project, 
it was fairly trivial to Mavenize another. Just set up the dependencies 
correctly, and you should be good to go. So now I am a very happy Maven 
user and find it to be extremely powerful.

Kelly Davis

Phillip Rhodes wrote:
> 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
>
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