Re: [RANT] Maven is both heaven and hell

> Wendell Beckwith wrote:
>
> > You're like
>> original band members, but it hurts to say that you all are  
>> getting your
>> asses handed to you by orgs like Spring and Eclipse.  There just  
>> doing a far
>> better job on the dcomentation and website.
>
> Having used maven1 for a long time (and having been blown away by  
> the concept of a build system that "already knew how to do stuff in  
> a mutually agreed way", replacing "yet another half written custom  
> ant script"), I decided that it was time to sell the current  
> project team on the idea of maven2.
>
> The conclusion of the attempt to use maven2 is that it is simply  
> not finished yet. Some features taken for granted in maven1 are  
> missing/incomplete, and the documentation is missing/incomplete.
>
> I think the maven2 project is showing signs of the second system  
> effect - maven1 was carefully and thoughtfully constructed,  
> documentation carefully and thoughtfully created. And - it helped  
> that maven1 was largely complete before people discovered the  
> concept of an intelligent build system.
>
> maven2 seems to have been built with enthusiasm - but crucial  
> elements (like key maven1 features, and documentation) have not  
> been completed.
>
> Luckily, there is no evidence of the second system effect in the  
> design of maven2 (IMHO of course), the problems are in the finish  
> of the software, meaning that fixing this means altering the focus  
> from new features to finishing existing ones, and completing the  
> documentation (as opposed to revisiting a design, or rewriting code).
>
> The reason this is important is this:
>
> maven1 was a complete no brainer to sell to projects. Once I had  
> shown people that there was no need to construct ant scripts to do  
> everyday tasks, maven1 "just knew" how to do things, and this was a  
> huge win, case closed.
>
> On the particular project I am on now, maven1 was considered and  
> rejected for not supporting transitive dependencies (fair enough)  
> so they cooked up their own half working ant scripts, using ivy to  
> handle dependencies. maven2 does support transitive dependencies,  
> so in theory it should have been a no brainer sell, as before. But  
> in reality my testing the waters has uncovered a miriad of  
> problems, leading us to suggest that maven2 initially just be used  
> to generate documentation (mvn site).
>
> I agree with comments that the documentation needs urgent work, and  
> I as a new user of maven2, have been trying to add what I consider  
> missing information from a new user point of view to JIRA (ie, what  
> information would have helped me use maven2, that was missing or  
> incomplete).
>
> If users could channel issues causing them frustration with the  
> docs into concise JIRA reports "I am trying to perform task X but  
> the docs don't tell me how" (which needs to be done at the time,  
> because after you finally figured out the problem, suddenly that  
> JIRA report doesn't seem so urgent any more), it will go a long way  
> to indicate to developers where there are gaps that need filling.
>
> Regards,
> Graham
> --