Hey everyone,

Thanks for the replies to my "rant".  Sorry about the bad term being used,
but my rant was really meant to be honest feedback from a new user trying to
decide whether to adopt M2.  And that's a new user who's already adopted M1
for past projects and is trying to convince a team of developers.

You also have to realize that "mainstream" users who just want to use M2
frankly aren't going to go through the whole process of going through JIRA
trying to search for an issue and then make sure they're not entering a
duplicate then enter their own issue and then hope someone works on it.
Most brand new users won't be very inclined (yet) to participate in the
community because in order to be inclined to participate in the community
they want to see that the product (in this case M2) does what they want it
to do, and does it easily.  If it doesn't seem to do what they expect it to
they're not going to go file an issue.  They're just going to move on.  It's
like launching a new online store with a lot of issues and saying "just make
sure that the customer service email is prominently displayed everywhere so
that if something wrong happens as they try to use the site they can send us
an email."

The point that people forget how long they spent learning Ant is a good
point.  However, that's exactly the point.  They've forgotten.  I know I've
forgotten.  At this point, most people *have* learned ant and think of it as
easy now in that they know how to use it really well.  So that's where
they're coming from I think.  They're looking for something that saves the
time and is easier to use than they're current level of experience with
Ant.  The good thing is that most people also know how much of a pain Ant is
when you have to keep maintaining all those duplicate build scripts.

I think Brett's idea to separate out alpha/beta plug-ins is a really good
one.  It's definitely hard to discern which is which.

I think what'll help most new comers is a simple cook book that gets people
started.  But one that shows you how to use the core plug-ins so that
someone can easily see that this is way better than Ant.  Something like "in
5 minutes you'll be running tests, generating test coverage reports,
generating your javadoc, checking dependencies, running a continuous
integration server, checking coding guidelines all hooked into one
auto-generated site.  John Smart's
article<http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-2005/jw-1205-maven-p3.html>was
a great start but didn't go into some of the cooler core plug-ins. 
I'm
hoping he'll do a follow-up article going into some of the core plug-ins.
If not, heck, after I hopefully figure all that stuff out I'll write the
guide!

Believe me, I'm coming from a place where I really want to see M2 succeed.
I do see the long term benefits and am sick of Ant.

Anyways, could someone point me in the direction of which plug-in to use to
do continuous integration?

Thanks,
Christian

On 2/17/06, Brett Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> While I generally agree with your response, a couple of points:
>
> On 2/17/06, Dion Gillard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Beta plugins == Beta experience.
>
> I've been planning to, and am even more inclined, to stop publishing
> (start pulling out?) alpha and beta releases from the central
> repository. They should be in a separate repository you have to ask
> for.
>
> There will always be plugins in alpha and beta. The critical ones (all
> the core ones related to site generation) are actually reasonably
> stable in their current beta state and will get final releases this or
> next month.
>
> > Beta documentation == Beta experience.
>
> True, but I'd also wish those complaining about it would point at the
> hole (and yes, there are many), file a JIRA issue, and says "fix this
> one". We're working through them. It's incredibly hard to know what's
> missing on the inside looking out.
>
> > Quality mailing list help == Happy user.
>
> And I think we have that. Stephen is one of the many people that
> regularly helps others here, and is to be commended for it.
>
> > Things always improve over time. M2 is a big disconnect from M1 and
> > that also causes frustration. In the short term, the best thing we can
> > do is improve the products, the documentation and help people,
>
> +1
>
> > listen to their rants while reading between the lines.
>
> I'd really rather not. Ranting gets you nowhere, and is likely to get
> a response sharing your own tone.
>
> It's not like a bunch of people are sitting here twiddling their
> thumbs doing nothing, and jumping up when someone complains. Everyone
> is working on stuff, and everyone has different priorities. Let your
> problems be known, file a bug, vote for it, prod if it doesn't get
> responded to, and if you are really desparate - patch it :) But let's
> keep it friendly.
>
> >
> > My 2c.
>
> Hey, we don't have that currency here anymore! :)
>
> - Brett
>
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