Page History

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(See Mailing list posting)

Issues

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It may also be possible to restructure the existing build to be a little more Maven-friendly. The Ant build could use the Ant Tasks for Maven or Ivy to pull in JARs, for example. This could allow some of the benefits of Maven, without all the pain. This could be a transitional step towards a full Maven build.

Issues

General Issues

• Maven is controversial, some love it, others hate it
• We'll need to clearly lay out real benefits and drawbacks in this proposal.
• Hopefully, the Maven team will make improvements to Maven to address valid complaints.
• Maven allows simple builds to be implemented "declaratively" but mechanisms for implementing custom build logic can be frustrating.
• We'll need to make sure all current and future build logic can be handled by Maven.

Specific Issues

• Roller Build Advanced Features (A list of things in the Roller build that would require a Maven plugins or scripting should go here)
• Multiple sub-projects and build artifacts mandate a Maven "multiproject"
• Current Ant build uses Ant XML fragments to allow developer's to customize the Roller build for their installation (How would this mechanism "port" to Maven?)
• General Maven Issues
• e.g. XML verbosity go here

Benefits

It will be important for these benefits to be clearly described and contrasted with mechanisms in the current (or an improved Ant build.)

• JARs can be removed from SVN and stored in a single location on a developer's system
• Speeds up SVN checkouts
• Reduces storage requirement on developer's system (especially if simultaneously using multiple branches)
• Note: This could also be done wit Ant tasks for Maven or Ivy.
• Maven plugins can be used to generate IDE project files
• To generate Eclipse .project and .classpath, use: mvn eclipse:eclipse

• Wiki Markup
  To generate IDEA project, module, and workspace files, use: {{{mvn idea:idea}}

• What about NetBeans?
• Standard Maven layout and project site will make things easier for experienced Maven users
• This is a little bit subjective, but clearly some will see it as a benefit

Drawbacks

(How are these different than "General Maven Issues" above?)

• Effort of Implementation results in no new features for Roller
• Maven can make custom/advanced build features difficult to implement (see list of issues above)
• Maven may not be already installed on Developer's systems

Comments

Please enter comments below or send comments directly to Sean Gilligan – we're trying to hold off on discussing this on the lists for a while.

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