Why Everyone (Eventually) Hates (or Leaves) Maven

[Moandji Ezana]

http://nealford.com/memeagora/2013/01/22/why_everyone_eventually_hates_maven.html

Neal Ford argues that Maven's plugin architecture is great to get projects started, but that its lack of composability makes things like Rake or Gradle more useful as time goes on (in a more sophisticated way, of course).

I kind of feel this way about frameworks: I generally wish they were either a lot smaller than they tend to be or broken down into smaller, orthogonal-but-composable modules.

As for Maven, I haven't hit the kind of wall Neal has, but I try to stick to basic features and defaults (that's my general approach, actually).

Moandji

[Richard Vowles]

Or looking at it the other way, people like Neal lack the discipline and rigour to keep their builds a first class part of the development process. They treat it unlike the way they treat their code, which is, odd to be at its most polite.

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[Tim O'Brien]

Seems a bit harsh, Neal's entitled to an opinion, no?  

I mean some people need a programmable build, others don't.   Richard, you certainly don't want to program your build, but I could find a number of reasonable people who do.   I honestly think it depends on the project.  Maven when Maven's appropriate, Gradle when Gradle's appropriate, Rake when Rake's appropriate...

The real question is why do build tool conversations strike such a chord with people?   

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Cato <psel...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Cato]

On Saturday, 26 January 2013 00:14:49 UTC+13, Richard Vowles wrote:

I am sure having met and spoken to Neal he has discipline and rigour....he focuses on delivery not just development, which has lead to this arguement. Gradle aims to provide solutions to some issues the developers had with alternatives. Its not about tools...its about delivery and maintainability. Everyone has experienced Maven pain....when it is hindering the delivery governance it is time to look for something that suits you better....

[Moandji Ezana]

Just read Dean Wampler's rejoinder: http://blog.polyglotprogramming.com/2013/1/25/more-thoughts-on-modularity

"In the courseware I develop for Think Big Analytics, I use ant to build the Java code, but make for all other tasks, like building documents, staging resources, and packaging releases"

Falling back to Ant and make rather than learning how Maven plugins work seems extreme. Though I do wish writing Maven plugins felt less like writing an old-style JSP taglib.

Moandji

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[mP]

Sometimes i wonder if aliens looking down on earth think building is the core discipline of development, and actual coding in your IDE is well about as important as drinking a cup of tea with a spot of warm beef.

[Richard Vowles]

Its like that if you let it get away from you and don't start with a solid base to start with. Then build just gets hard and nasty - much like Mark when...

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 1:06 PM, mP <miroslav...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sometimes i wonder if aliens looking down on earth think building is the core discipline of development, and actual coding in your IDE is well about as important as drinking a cup of tea with a spot of warm beef.

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Richard Vowles,
Grails, Groovy, Java, Javascript, AngularJS
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative - Oscar Wilde
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