lemme give you my feedback and some history
Paul Shemansky wrote:
Dear Fellow Tomcat Developers,
As you may have already noticed, I recently joined the ASF and the
Tomcat Developer's List. I have been a Maven 2 user since 2005, and I
previously used Ant for all of my projects. I suffered through many
hardships migrating from Ant to Maven, but in my humble opinion, it
was well worth it. I believe that the Tomcat build can certainly
benefit from some of the key features of Maven 2 mentioned below.
It is not my intention to start a flame war between Ant and Maven
users, but merely to propose Maven 2 to this group, and respectfully
use this thread to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of
switching Tomcat's build process within the 6.0.x or possibly 7.0
release schedule. Please use this thread to voice your opinion. Reply
to this message with any comments, and/or simple votes for or against
the migration to Maven 2.
If by some odd chance you have never seen or heard about Maven 2,
please visit and explore :
http://maven.apache.org/
Key features that may be useful to us are :
- The Standard Directory Layout - Specifically, multi-module builds.
This might make managing individual components easier for catalina,
coyote, naming, jsp/servlet api/implementation, connector, etc.
we just refactored everything from being "component/module" based into a
single source tree.
Everyone at the time agreed that it would make life easier, for me
personally, it was a huge improvement.
- Model-Based builds - Automatic packaging for the individual modules.
not sure what this is, even though we have a single source tree, we do
generate a list of jars.
- Dependency Management - Whether it is Apache or another third-party,
dependencies can all easily be plugged in.
we do that today, crude but working, ANT just adopted Ivy, a dependency
manager for ANT.
- Distribution Management - Packaging and Deployment - Although Tomcat
has a structured distribution model with Ant, Maven could make this
easier with its assembly plugin. This also allows outside entities to
easily embed specific Tomcat components or customize the server to
suit their needs, (i.e. containers like Geronimo and JBoss, IDE
plugins for Eclipse or Tomcat.)
We currently have a "distribute to Maven repo" in place.
The most current version is in the sandbox, that would allow us to
publish to the central ASF repo with signed JAR's.
This allows(will allow) other projects that do use Maven, to integrate
tomcat into their system.
You can glance over it here
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/tomcat/sandbox/gdev6x/res/maven/
- Project Site and Report Generation. - The Tomcat documentation site
may benefit greatly, but the Maven reporting plugins seem to be the
bigger win here.
As a new ASF / Tomcat contributor, I am hesitant to step on toes.
But, I vote that we eat the dog food.
and in that last statement is where I think the problem lies. I've
attended a few hackathons where the coders at my table spent most of
their day "eating the dog food".
This has not really been the case with Tomcat, and especially Tomcat 6
simplified version of the structure and build.
So, speaking for myself, I have yet not seen a benefit of Maven over our
current ANT build. And I wouldn't be up for eating dog food.
water and cracker, although simple, have sustained us very long.
I'd vote against the proposal, maybe cause I'm just getting to old to
spend hours with Maven, but you should collect feedback from the others
as well, and maybe there is a majority one way or the other.
Filip
This migration would certainly
be something that I could dedicate myself to, and I believe I could
make the transition seamless for all of us. I look forward to hearing
from you. Whether you vote Yes or No, I am still happy to be working
with you. :)
Thank You,
Paul Shemansky
Maven 2 Evangelist / Open-Source Advocate / Java Code-Monkey
P.S. - Maven has also been covered by the last few issues of JDJ,
which has certainly given it a lot more public exposure lately :
http://java.sys-con.com/read/393300.htm
http://java.sys-con.com/read/400116.htm
http://java.sys-con.com/read/419727.htm
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