Apache Maven 1.0 Released

darthcamaro writes "internetnews.com is running a story on the release of Apache Maven 1.0 this week. Maven is a very robust project-management and project comprehension tool that is unparalleled in either open source or proprietary software. 'Maven has a long history of pushing out beta after beta, so this is definitely an important release,' Jason Van Zyl, Maven architect release manager, told internetnews.com. 'For users it means that they will have something reliable now for their production builds.' From some of the comments that Van Zyl makes in the story though, it look like the upcoming 2.0 version will be the real killer app, though 1.0 is certainly nothing to sneeze at either..."

Comments

Link to project

[Inominate]

Why do stories like this so often leave out a link to the actual project?

http://maven.apache.org/

Re:Link to project

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a project management tool.

It's a Java programming project management tool.

There is a huge difference between the two things.

Re:Link to project

[radish]

Errr...it is it's own screenshot. Maven is used to build Maven, and the output is the site you see before you.

Re:Link to project

[legenx]

Maven is a command-line tool. The screenshots are not that impressive...:)

If you know Ant (Java much improved version of make), Maven is like Ant on steroid. Maven handles intra/inter-project dependencies, project site documentation generation, unit testing, code coverage, packaging, deployment, and there's even a plugin to test whether your code conform to the coding standard.

One of the major strength of Maven is that it manages the various jar (library) dependencies in a seemless way. Multiple subprojects do not need to duplicate the jars that they depend on. You can even throw multiple subprojects into a "reactor" and it'll build them in the correct order based on their dependency graph.

It's sad that it's for Java only. I wish there's something like Maven for C/C++, or even C#, but so far I don't think I find anything yet.

Re:Link to project

[sbrown123]

Maven is like Ant on steroid.


Great. This is just what the world needs. Ant has something like 100 different tags with like 10 attributes to each of those. Creating large projects with Ant becomes a huge task of managing xml errors while trying to get the damn thing to build something. Now lets add some complication! People will love this. Eat it right up!

Someone really needs to build a better make. Make a better make. Whatever. If your one of those wacky open source coders who dont have a project to waste your time on this planet behind a computer than this is a project for you!

definition

[zogger]

I would imagine there are a lot of people (like me) who had *no idea* what this is or what it is for. Here is the one paragraph definition of it FTA:

"Maven defines itself as a project-management and project-comprehension tool. Its project object model (POM) controls the development and management of a project. The POM controls builds, document creation, site publication and distribution publication and can be stored in an XML file. Maven also provides a set of tools to enable developers to automatically generate a number of critical items, such as source metrics; mailing, developer and dependency lists; software development process documentation; change logs based directly on source repository; and source cross-references."

In other words, it looks like a cross between the head cheese coding despot on any development project mailinglist and an automated webmaster thingee.... a management worker bot whatever.. it's a....

I still don't know what it is :(

Re:definition

[MythMoth]

Let me clarify.

It's a great big pain in the butt.

Re:definition

[poot_rootbeer]

I still don't know what it is :(

Imagine a superset of `ant build` that not only compiles your binaries, but also generates your documentation and install and test everything you need to run your application out-of-the-box in a single step.

Re:definition

[multipartmixed]

> Imagine a superset of `ant build` that not only compiles your binaries, but
> also generates your documentation and install and test everything you need
> to run your application out-of-the-box in a single step.

You mean like 'make' with a default rules, plus a couple of shell scripts and Doxygen?

*yawn*

I've been doing that for a while, now.

Re:definition

[Atzanteol]

Out of the box? Or after three days of configuration?

Everytime I encounter one of these huge java 'management' thingys it takes more time to configure the bloody thing than is ever saved.

Also, what does it do that Ant doesn't? I mean, one can have ant generate javadoc, or run unit tests too...

Re:definition

[M1FCJ]

If you download the maven source, with a minimal set of configuration, you have something going because Maven is used to build Maven.

If you are building a new project, it takes a couple of hours on a sizeable project, if it is quite complex, it will take some time to incorporate everything. You can't build a complicated compile/tool chain without spending some time.

It is more visual compared to ant, more interactive. Ant is just a workhorse, this has some estethics. On the other hand, if you are happy with ant, maven doesn't add anything new.

If you are going to start a new project, give Maven a try. If you already have something mature based on complicated Ant scripts, moving to Maven won't add any value to your development system.

Re:definition

[MythMoth]

Hmm... I seem to have been modded funny for that, but actually I kind of mean it.

Having tried to use a couple of projects that depended upon it, I found that maven really was quite painful to use, and the projects seemed less "clean" than ones built by Ant with greater constraints on the library versions they can use.

Worse yet, trying to build a project that's been mavenized when you're subsisting on 28.8K thinband is a nightmare. Maven's repository may seem like a great idea, but it's a terrible one for anyone behind a restrictive proxy, or otherwise unable to take advantage of this "feature".

If you are choosing between a project based on maven and one based on Ant then I'd recommend the Ant one. Maven has no features that I consider compelling over and above Ant, but it is much more complicated, and it does introduce problems for some users' circumstances.

Incredibly useful build tool

[d-rock]

We have started using Maven for in-house development and it really simplifies things. Being able to declare dependencies on libraries, etc, and have Maven go and grab the correct versions during build is cool enough, but all of the reporting and site building tools are really incredible. The PHBs were very impressed with the code analysis reports that it generates, and the CVS annotation of code is very nice for our internal sites. It takes a little getting used to, but if you've used Ant, you're halfway there.

Derek

Re:Incredibly useful build tool

[clamatius]

I've been using Maven for the last week or so to see what it's like. You can think of it as Ant's big brother - you use it for automating build systems and all the stuff associated with that like javadoc, reporting, changelogs and so on.

I have mixed opinions on Maven.

On the good side, the console mode is useful. Maven is pretty slow to start up as it's written in Java and the JVM takes a while to get moving - console mode works round that. The site generation plugins are also pretty cool, as you pointed out.

On the bad side, it uses Jelly for its scripting language. Jelly seems kind of evil and I'm guessing the Maven developers think the same since I don't think they're going to be using Jelly for Maven 2.0. The documentation on writing new plugins (half the point of Maven if you ask me) also leaves a lot to be desired. I found I had much better luck just un-jar-ing the plugins Maven was using and looking at those rather than trying to find something out from the Jelly or Maven documentation. It's also pretty much a Java tool - while in theory you can write plugins to deal with other languages, all the existing plugins are very Java-focused.

So in summary, better than Ant? YMMV, depending on your needs.

Re:Incredibly useful build tool

[d-rock]

My understanding is that it's built on top of/around Ant. One of the Maven tasks is to spit out an equivalent Ant build file for the project.

Derek

Re:Incredibly useful build tool

[clamatius]

Maven Subversion support (haven't tried it myself).

Maven Bile

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bileblog has an alternative view on Maven.

Re:Maven Bile

[malloc]

That could win the best-FUD-of-the-year award. Full of scathing remarks, but nary an actual hard fact in sight.

-Malloc

Re:Maven Bile

[bokmann]

Did that weblog actually contain any substance? It doesn't say a thing about WHY this person doesn't like Maven, it just criticizes the people that code and maintain it. It doesn't even really criticize them, as much as call them names.

Give me a concrete reason why Maven isn't worth using... This weblog doesn't do that.

For the record, I am well aware of Maven's shortcomings - the draconian 'one size fits all' approach to some aspects of the build system. While I don't agree that 'one size fits all', I DO believe that Maven fits many, many projects quite nicely.

If you work in a shop obsessed with process management (CMM, CMMi, ISO900x, and even some 'agile' stuff), if you work with Java, and/or if you just want a no-hassle build system that gives you a bunch of stuff 'boiler-plate', check it out.

Love it or hate it, form your own opinion and be 'in the know'. Maven is not going away anytime soon. (And it is NOT an Ant replacement.)

-db

Re:Maven Bile

[Knight2K]

I agree with some other posters here that the BileBlog posts on Maven don't really offer clear reasons why Maven is bad. If you read enough of his posts on Maven you can pull out some of his general issues:

1. The auto-generated website has a lot of pointless information that most people don't care about.
2. The language it's implemented in is crap.
3. The project favors features over stability.
4. Maven highly constrains project layouts
5. New releases break stuff that worked in old releases

For the record, I don't think the idea of Maven is bad. The sexiest feature in my mind is declaring library dependencies by name and version number and having Maven pull down the required library from a central repository. No more cryptically named jars checked into version control. Upgrading the library is as simple as changing the version number. Inter-project dependencies are simplified since Maven publishes build artifacts to the repository for you. Other projects can just treat your project like another library dependency. Think of it like APT for Java builds.

I find myself writing the same constructs over and over in Ant. There really aren't that many ways of build a J2EE application. Maven takes care of a lot of the tedious details by letting you specify at a high-level what you want to build; it takes care of building classpaths and assembling pieces into an EAR file. You can just get on with the code.

I also don't have a significant problem with some of the constraints Maven puts on projects. It's a pain when you have something specific in mind or are trying to retrofit a project, but it is kinda nice to be able to look at any Java project and instantly grasp where to find things. Enforcing a directory layout may constrain the developer but increases transparency. The GNU projects generally follow a standard project layout with Autoconf support. I personally would not want to give up ./configure;make;make install. Standardizing project layouts helps make ease of use like that possible. Whether Maven picked a good standard or not is another matter.

Where I agree with Hani's blog is:

1. The implementation language sucks. Using XML as the syntax of a scripting language has to be the worst idea ever. I had to go in and tweak a few Maven plugins when it was in beta and I still have nightmares.
2. Compatibility was broken between releases. I know that for a while Maven was in beta, but the beta cycles were so long that people assumed it was 'good enough', like JDOM. At a few points, I thought the project was dead. So it was majorly irritating when simple things broke when upgrading releases. The BileBlogger rightfully points out that betas should be about stabilizing releases, not doing a lot of feature fiddling

I've been thinking about bringing it in for an effort I am currently working on. A lot of its features would match my needs. The issues that Hani identified however, especially the implementation language, are holding me back.

There is also the fact that Ant is very well known. Many people are capable of fixing issues with Ant scripts. Extending Ant for custom tasks is also fairly trivial. I wouldn't really want to write a Maven plugin. And debugging the damn thing is tough since most of the logic is hidden.

Re:Sheesh

[rkuris]

MS Project is NOT bug free; not even close. I would venture to guess that MS Project has more bugs than IE. It's non-intuitive also.

I, for one, am glad to see this project get moving. I'd love to see open-source and closed source projects get real project managers using real project management software.

Everyone will be more organized that way!

Not the only thing left out: it's for Java only

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, the headline also left out the rather key information that this tool is for Java projects only.

I was quite looking forward to a revolutionary project management tool ... alas, this one is yet another myopic product of the "Java is the whole universe" generation.

Java is great ... but there is a larger world out there you know.

Java

[yamla]

This is only for Java projects, it seems.

Visualize them!

[Mustang Matt]

I'm trying to get it to run on windows.

I must not have the right "Java" as it is telling me it can't lib/tools.jar so I'm going to go grab the latest jdk and see what happens.

For anyone getting the JAVA_HOME environment variable not set, a reminder is that you can set env. vars by right clicking on my computer and going to advanced and then there's an environment vars button.

Re:Visualize them!

[furball]

There's a godawful lot of things you have to point the JDK to in order for it get everything it needs. I used to hack on a code metrics analysis tool. The build instruction for Windows was a complete mess.

Mac OS X just did things right. It did it even better than Solaris.

However, this being a development tool rightfully has some fairly high minimum knowledge requirements. If you're trying to get it to find lib/tools.jar by upgrading to the latest JDK, you're not in the intended audience for this sort of thing. I'm not being insulting. It's just that most people who work with Java knows what lib/tools.jar is and how to get it found.

Re:Visualize them!

[minniger]

Also make sure your path is set correctly.

Click on PATH and edit it so the JAVA_HOME is at the FRONT
of the path as so:

%JAVA_HOME%\bin;<... rest of path ...>

and you have JAVA_HOME set as:

JAVA_HOME=<path to jsdk or jre home>

This will save you boatloads of problems.

------------

It's a good thing Swing sucks and is too hard to use or else
I wouldn't be able to do my dev on a mac and deploy my apps
to windows. Silly me.

Zyl...Zuul...Coincidence

[GaryOlson]

Codebusters?

Hell,

[eril]

I've been using it for about a month and I still don't know what it is. All's I know is that I go to the project directory I just downloaded from CVS, I type

maven eclipse

and all the extra files and shit I need for the project to compile and work are automatically there.

Aside from that, I know that Maven reads from an xml based config file that's in the project directory.

Check out JAM for Maven

[alphafoo]

I started using Maven about a month ago, just to see what all the fuss was about. There is a lot to it, and it can be overwhelming. But there is a good middle ground between roll-your-own-ant and Maven, and it's called Javagen Ant Modules (JAM) and it's here.

What I got from JAM that is useful to me:

• dependency management automatically downloads library JARs for me during build.
• common build.xml file and framework, so all my Maven projects have same basic structure.
• Reduced learning curve so I could get going without learning everything about Maven all at once.
• access to lots of cool Maven "plugins" like maven-eclipse that integrate the whole thing into my Eclipse3.0 setup.

Its a love it or hate it project

[Timesprout]

Unfortunately most people seem to hate it. Maybe thats just my bias because I tried it and found it a complete pain in the ass to work with. I dont like supposed development aides thats want to tell me how I should organise everything to suit its quirks rather than my preferences. Its really irritating when this demands vast amounts of configuration to achieve and requires a scripting language who creator has apologised for creating an abomination.

Think I (and many others) will stick with ant for the time being

Re:Its a love it or hate it project

[svetlin]

Unfortunately most people seem to hate it.
Maven mailing list(s) is one of the most active ones, with +50 messages a day. Most articles and comments at ServerSide, IBM DeveloperWorks and elsewhere are quite favorable toward it. Many major projects (e.g. Geronimo) are using it.

I dont like supposed development aides thats want to tell me how I should organise everything to suit its quirks rather than my preferences.
Maven follows well established practices (e.g. directory structure) from the Apache Jakarta projects. Accustomed to Ant's freedom, I also was unhappy with some defaults/behaviors initially, but gradually all of them made sense.

Its really irritating when this demands vast amounts of configuration to achieve
I interpret this to mean that attempting to implement your quirks in Maven took vast amount of configuration to achieve, and have no objection to that.
Another massive configuration effort is required when an existing complex and rather quirky Ant build of a large application is migrated to Maven (as it was in my case, I should mention that I wrote also the Ant build ;-)).
But starting with Maven on a common medium-sized app is relatively easy when using the GenApp plugin.

requires a scripting language who creator has apologised for creating an abomination
I agree here. I also do not like the idea of executable XML, of using XML as a programming language. Please note, however, that Jelly is an interface for tags in Maven used to implement plugins. In principle, any mechanism for embedding tags will do (and there is significant work in this direction for v2 AFAIK).

So, apart from personal taste, Maven is quite a solid production-ready project build and comprehension tool.

--
Svetlin

Re:Not the only thing left out: it's for Java only

[Kingpin]

Is it really Java only? It's written in Java yes, it supports many common Java paradigms - would it not be fairly simple to use doxygen rather than javadoc, gcc rather than javac, nunit rather than junit etc etc.

Ant allows this, and I understand Maven to be an evolution of build tools, so I don't see why it should not be project-development-technology-agnostic.

Re:Bloated project mgt software killed Netscape

[radish]

Ha!

Jakarta has been running for years and is without a doubt the most important open source project in the Java world (and one of the more important anywhere). And it's part of Apache.

Apache is not just a webserver and it hasn't been for a looooong time.

Re:Not the only thing left out: it's for Java only

[radish]

Not true. It uses ant, ant can do anything (think of it as a replacement for make). People here build C, C++ and a bunch of other stuff using ant. With the correct modules you wrap all that up (with your Java components) into one nicely managed project.

Sure it's written _in_ Java, but it's not just _for_ Java (but naturally, the user community is heavily biased in that direction).

Screenshot

[_xeno_]

C:\maven-1.0>bin\maven
.__ __
| \/ |__ _Apache__ ___
| |\/| / _` \ V / -_) ' \ ~ intelligent projects ~
|_| |_\__,_|\_/\___|_||_| v. 1.0

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 1 seconds
Finished at: Fri Jul 16 17:34:27 EDT 2004

---

It's a console app. You call it and it builds "stuff", much like Ant does. I don't really know much more than that right now, though, so no complicated questions please. :)

(Oh, and that "screenshot" is messed up, I had to add a "." to make sure it stayed indented properly, Slashdot messed it up otherwise.)

Re:Screenshot

[dubious9]

Erm... so you didn't really read the page huh? Maven is a project automation tool, not a build automation tool. You configure it to do (continuous) builds, but also to do documention, collaboration etc.

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, I wasn't on the bandwagon either until I actually used it for a project.

Re:Not the only thing left out: it's for Java only

[clamatius]

It's technically possible but part of the point of the thing is that you don't have to spend forever writing build scripts to get going. So once there's a set of users writing plugins with better support for (e.g.) C# and C++, sure it'll be agnostic.

Right now it's effectively a Java tool since most of the plugins are for Java (jar, javac, javadoc, junit, etc).

Re:OT: FOSS competitor to Microsoft Project?

[_termx23]

Try dotproject.

http://www.dotproject.net

Not yet the equal of M$ Project, but given time...

Oh, you for mean for programming projects only

[Jayfar]

I was hoping it was a project management system, not a programming project management tool, not a java thing. Nothing to see here for me; I'll move along now.

Re:Oh, you for mean for programming projects only

[tntguy]

This isn't the project you are looking for.

Re: The PHBs were very impressed

[Morgaine]

The PHBs were very impressed ...

I didn't follow whether this was intended as praise or criticism.

A different opinion

[joeykiller]

Not everyone seems to be fond of Maven. This guy lists both pros and cons with Maven, but lands on the negative side.

I havent used Maven myself, but since this was mostly a very positive announcement, I guess it cant hurt to point to another point of view.

Java as a system facility

[Brian Blessed]

I've only used Maven in the way that it has been part of projects that I've downloaded.
Something that gives me reservations is the way that it manages library dependencies by downloading them into the project tree. On a Unix system this feels inconsistent because I prefer to manage installed software (libraries) on a system-wide basis.

It would be nice if there were a consensus on Java library dependency resolution/installation. I used to use the exellent jpackage.org on Mandrake, but now I appreciate the source compilation aspect of Gentoo (although many of Gentoo's Java packages are old). A combination of the two would be ideal.

And whilst I'm forming a wishlist, I'd also like Java applications to have greater integration with the system, not on the desktop, but in the way that multiple invocations might have less of a memory penalty (like a Java subsystem).

- Brian.

Re:Bloated project mgt software killed Netscape

[Anonymous Coward]

The ASF has been doing projects that aren't directly related to web servers for a long time. Also, poor software engineering killed Netscape. They were pouring resources into the horrible 4.x codebase and weren't getting anywhere. That's why Mozilla started from scratch.

Re:Maven Great???

[lorcha]

Real issues? I read that rant, but I must have missed all those "real issues". Could you please point me to a single "real issue" in there?

Re:Not the only thing left out: it's for Java only

[nettdata]

Sadly, the headline also left out the rather key information that this tool is for Java projects only.


Actually, no, it's not. We use it to build C code, install and configure Oracle and DB2 databases, automate some OpenSSL stuff, put together PHP sites, and rsync stuff all over the place. We also use it for managing our main Java app as well.

Just the tool is Java-based.

Red Dwarf Does Maven

[SuperBanana]

Cat: "What is it?"
Cryten: "a project-management and project-comprehension software tool that uses a Project Object Model with XML storage"

(blank, smiling stare)

Cat: "What is it?"
Cryten: "a project management tool that increases developer productivity when working on Java projects."

(blank, smiling stare)

Cat:"What is it?"
Holly: "a computer thingy"
Cat: "Aaaaaah. Now why didn't you say that in the first place?"

(everything I needed to know, I learned watching Red Dwarf!)

Ouch, not "JAM" ! Non Java-centric "jam" exists

[Morgaine]

But there is a good middle ground between roll-your-own-ant and Maven, and it's called Javagen Ant Modules (JAM) ...

That's very bad news, because the open-source build tool "jam" already exists and has been around for a very long time. And it's really good too.

People really ought to google a bit before picking names for their project tools. Sure, names can often be reused without conflict, but here both jam's are program build tools, and that's just plain short-sighted.

You want this then...

[Big Sean O]

Gantt Project

It's similar enough to Microsoft Project. Gantt Charts have been a project management standard for almost 100 years.

Linux, Mac OS X, Windows. It's Java, so take yer pick. GPL'd too.

My impressions of maven

[scrytch]

Maven is probably best thought of as a java equivalent to portage, i.e. it concerns itself with fetching, building, packaging (including metadata like authors and such), and version tracking. It just lacks a browseable set of package skeletons the way ports and portage does.
I used maven about a year ago, and I found it to be incredibly slow, bloated, underdocumented, amateurish, slipshod, and oh yes, buggy. It seems designed around some sort of "kitchen sink" approach of "xml is kewl, plugins are kewl, let's glom it all together and make something ... kewl".

Honestly, whenever I see the word "plugin", I think someone hasn't really designed things well. Instead of providing a coherent app, they make a library of functions and let random piecemeal bits added after the thought take over the actual functioning. I'm not knocking component design, just the typical thought process that goes into typical "plugin" architectures. Stick with ant, you'll be much more sane for it.

try the ACTUAL bile

[BoxedFlame]

Why Maven Sucks

The bile you linked is just a reminder so no one forgets that it indeed still sucks.

It is a build tool .

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a Build Tool, not a "project management tool".

What it builds are software programs.

What it was designed for and is good at is building the software called "Apache". The more a software development project looks like the Apache one, the more likly it is a useful tool for that project.

You want a management tool. This is NOT it.

You want a nonsoftware project tool. This is NOT it.

You want a build tool for a research software project, say in AI or written in LISP. This is NOT IT.

You want a build tool for far flung contributors writting code in Java (or java like language) with all the structural details about the project already known. Bingo!!! This is the tool for you.

... a long history of pushing out beta after beta

[Fry a Lad Up]

"Maven has a long history of pushing out beta after beta, "

If only they had a good project management tool.

see qbal.mozdev.org

[bigusputicus]

I posted earlier anonymously. I'm bulding a superset of what Maven provides for Linux distros and projects. Been building engineering intranet sites since 95 that provide some of the features maven has along with some features maven does not have. QBAL will be GPL'd. I'm coming up to speed on Mozilla/XUL now and will have something ready this fall. Take a look at http://qbal.mozdev.org to get an idea of the scope.

Bigusputicus

Re:Not the only thing left out: it's for Java only

[greenrd]

Another downside to make: People often start with the false assumption that Makefiles are automatically cross-platform, and then find out that they aren't.

Also, make/automake/autoconf/autoheader/... can be quite complicated and confusing. Whereas ant (and presumably maven) are pretty simple by comparison.