Re: Maven Optimism

From: Pierce T. Wetter III (pierc..winforces.com)
Date: Wed Jul 09 2008 - 14:32:02 EDT

  • Next message: Chuck Hill: "Re: Maven Optimism"

    On Jul 9, 2008, at 10:11 AM, Anjo Krank wrote:

    > Note: I don't think LOC is a good metric, but what the heck. Also,
    > I'm not really interested in this discussion. I wouldn't participate
    > if not for these unfounded claims you made.

       Sorry, I agree that LOC isn't a good metric. I especially think
    that I'd rather have 2000 lines of easily readable code then 1000
    lines of unreadable code.

       But a well founded claim of mine is that I'm a lot farther along in
    understanding maven builds then I've ever been with Ant builds. So far
    I've read 2 Ant books, and 0 maven books. So like the title says, I'm
    more optimistic about maven then I was last week.
    >
    > I gave an example for a project ant build file and do not see how
    > this is complicated at all. One may argue that docs on the
    > trizillion properties is lacking, but haven't seen anyone asking on
    > the list so far, so I can only assume they work well for everybody
    > who is interested.

       Your example consists of variants of:

    <ant antFile="Build/build/build.xml" target="${project.name}.all"
    dir="../../../">
                <property name="build.action" value="install" />
            </ant>

       Which means that to understand it, I have to then go into Build/
    build/build.xml and figure out how things change based on the value of
    build.action. So I see this as a false simplicity. Our current build
    works exactly this way, and essentially I have to step through
    everything in build.xml and generic.xml in my mind to make sure
    they're doing the right things with the current values.

    >
    >
    >>> Fourth, adding a project typically requires five lines in Build/
    >>> build/build.xml to add it to the correct group and some props. I
    >>> might consider moving these props from the build file to a
    >>> build.properties and making Build/build/build.xml only specify the
    >>> inter-related deps.
    >>
    >> Except you have to add the build dependencies somewhere as well,
    >> which if you want to compare apples/oranges, you really have to
    >> count right? You also have to count the information in
    >> build.properties. The information in the pom.xml file for a new
    >> project without dependencies is more then 5 lines, its like 10
    >> lines, but 5 of those name the project so you can reference it
    >> elsewhere and the other 5 reference the super-pom
    >
    > My top-level stuff for the project group(s) is also only a few lines.

      Same here. That wasn't quite what I was saying, I was saying that
    the minimum pom.xml file can be quite short as well.
    >
    >
    > But whatever: where is the maven dual build of Wonder with 5.4 and
    > 5.3?

       Again, you're asking the wrong person, I'm just learning maven.
    Right now, "woversion" is a parameter to the top level pom.xml, so
    presumably it would be possible to build it both ways. Or even better,
    against all the Apple nightly build snapshots. But I don't know how to
    do that yet.
    >
    > Never mind. This is my last post on this topic, maven users may
    > find peace and prosperity wherever they thread.

       There's no reason the maven/Ant builds can't be complimentary. It's
    always good to have options.

      Pierce



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