What are your impressions of Maven? [closed]

Answer 1

If your project is 'simple', then maven lets you get up and running quite quickly. By simple I mean you have a bunch of code, some resources, some test classes and it all goes together with some 3rd party jars to make an application.

The moment you want to do something unusual that is in some way specific to your own project then you will end up spending all your time trying to make maven do what you want it to and none of your time working on your code. This for me defeats the purpose of using a clever build system.

Maven is also dreadful for helping you diagnose problems when it's not working. And the build scripts are unreadable screeds of unintuitive and unnatural xml, which may of course be what you prefer and are looking for (If you have ant-vision).

I love maven. Maven is full of goodness and promise. I also hate maven.

Edit:

Oh, and the maven plugin for eclipse is flippin' brilliant.

Answer 2

@MetroidFan2002: Maven 1 is deprecated and it's arguably more stable than Maven 2 (although less features). Writing Jelly script is definitely a bad idea.

yc

Answer 3

The JavaPosse discussed Maven quite a bit in recent podcast #217. The consensus was that it's very restrictive in how it allows you to structure your projects, but that its usage is growing, and that it may offer a cross-IDE standard for representing a project.

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Update—Javaposse also hosted an informative session at last spring's Java Roundup 09 entitled, "Maven with Pain?" I laughed (in horrified sympathy) as, toward the end of the recording, one of the participants related how a plugin update broke their build—two days before a production release.

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I've steered clear of it, honestly, in large part because I find the name irritating. However, the ability to manage dependencies of third-party libraries is appealing.

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Update—for those that have an irrational disdain for my irrational opinion, let me show you what "maven" conjures up in my mind:

Yes, in my mind, Edna Mode is the epitome of "maven". And I don't want her in my build—too bossy!

What would be a better name? Invented words are best for their pin-point Google results. For a good impression, root them in real words with a positive connotation.

Answer 4

There a few very good things about maven:

• Archetypes: A kind of start up (base) project (very useful) that a lot of people make. In businesses where you tend to recreate the same kind of stuff over and over, it is extremely practical.
• Dependency management: You really have to try it to love it. Ivy is a good compatible tool too.
• Life cycle management: Without a entire IDE, you can do everything from the command line with maven and by that I mean: compile, package, test, deploy, etc. And its possible to make some step dependent on others. Although I think that the defaults are not the best, this part is customizable.

Additionally, maven can also do some ant stuff.

The downside for me is really about the fact that it is hard to port a project to it. It is best to start from scratch. Also, maven extensively uses plug-ins to do its job, but not everything is perfect in that regard and there aren't plug-ins for everything yet.

Answer 5

matt raible has a blog entry http://raibledesigns.com/rd/entry/comprehensive_project_intelligence_with_jason.

i have heard that most people that use maven do not like it.

Answer 6

I had the misfortune of working with Maven when it was transitioning from 1.x to 2.x. It pretty much consumed 100% of the time of one of our more senior team members. We eventually scrapped it.

However, more recently I had a chance to revisit maven, and I would say it has improved. One of my main issues has been the lack of good documentation, but after reading "Maven: the definitive guide", I would say its much easier to fathom.

Along with the m2eclipse plugin for eclipse, managing dependencies becomes a doddle - it has an excellent dependency visualisation tool.

Overall, I would say Maven is a great tool starting out on a project, but may start to lose its way once your build begins to gain complexity.