Maven Diaries http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/ en-us 2006-03-31T00:02:57+00:00 PVCS support coming to Maven SCM http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/001348_pvcs_support_coming_to_maven_scm.html We know that Maven SCM is getting traction when companies like Serena work on implementing a provider for Maven SCM and offer it to the community. Thank you Serena! Maven SCM is the Apache Maven Project's abstraction layer for SCMs which is used in many Maven plug-ins in addition to being used in Continuum. If you want to know more about Maven SCM you can check out our site.

]]> jvanzyl 2006-03-31T00:02:57+00:00 Continuum 1.0 Released! http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/001208_continuum_10_released.html The Maven team is pleased to announce the 1.0 of Continuum. Continuum is a
continous integration server.

We have progressively improved Continuum over five previous releases and now provides
the following features:

* Support for Maven 2.x

* Support for Maven 1.x

* Support for Ant

* Support for shell scripts

* Tight integration with Maven SCM

* Subversion

* CVS

* Starteam

* Easy to use web-based setup and interface

* XML-RPC and SOAP interfaces for integration, automation and remoting

* Mail Notification

* IM notification

* IRC

* Jabber

* MSN

* Blame Mechanism

For a complete list of changes please refer to the complete changelog.

To get started with Continuum take a look at the download and install instructions.

And then take a look at our getting started guide.

]]> jvanzyl 2005-10-26T18:23:23+00:00 Maven builds Struts http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/001203_maven_builds_struts.html I generally take a peek at all the top level project (TLP) reports that float by every few months at Apache and I noticed that Struts has moved their website and development infrastructure to Maven. The Struts project is using Maven 1.x so now we'll (The Maven Developers) just have to show the Struts folks how much better Maven 2.x is. I took a glance at the Struts website and noticed that the logo that I made for Craig five years ago with the Gimp is still being used. Some Perl scripting in the Gimp. Ouch.

]]> jvanzyl 2005-10-26T05:58:54+00:00 Maven 2.0 Release Now Available http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/001201__maven_20_release_now_available.html Figured I would post the whole release announcement here as it seems our entry posted to TSS isn't going to run our announcement which we posted five days ago. They posted the alpha-2 announcement so one would think they would run the announcement for the final release. Go figure. At any rate here's the full text of the announcement.

Maven is a build system that provides software project management and dependancy comprehension. Based on the concept of a project object model (POM), Maven manages a project's build, reporting and documentation from a central place.

Maven 2.0 is a rewrite of the popular Maven application, designed to both address previous functional requirements and provide a stable platform for extending and enhancing its build management framework.

This release is significantly faster and smaller than Maven 1.0 and includes the following usability and performance improvements:

  • Enhanced Dependency Management - includes dependency closures (transitive dependencies), version ranges, automatic build numbering, and automatic updating on a configurable interval
  • Defined Build Lifecycle - developers can build any type of project using standard commands such as compile, test and install
  • Unified Project Definition - manages all required build information in a single POM now, including project information, dependencies and plugin configuration

  • Extended Plugin Architecture - supports Java and scripting languages
    such as Beanshell for plugin development

  • Better Repository Support - includes separated snapshot repositories,
    a new more managable layout and per-project definitions of new
    repositories

  • Expanded Reactor Operation - offers built-in support for multiple
    projects (without the need to perform a full install cycle to compile
    all projects) and support for project aggregation

  • New Site Management Tools - supports multiple input and output
    formats, with input formats including wiki-like APT format and
    docbook, while continuing to support traditional Maven XDoc and FAQ
    format.

  • New Reporting API - offers a standardised method for producing project
    information and reports

  • And much more...

The Maven 2.0 release is considered stable and includes a Maven 1.0 complete feature set, with additional functionality. The most popular Maven 1.0 plugins have been converted for Maven 2.0, and many more are available in beta. See Plugin Matrix for more information on particular plugins.

Maven's advanced dependency management features rely on project metadata. If you are interested in improving support for the users of your project, see Project FAQ.

The Maven team would like to express thanks to the user and developer community for their beta testing, feedback and contributions that helped make the release possible!

To get started with Maven now, see the getting started guide: Getting Started Guide.

]]> Maven jvanzyl 2005-10-24T05:07:38+00:00 How to deal with submitted patches effectively using JIRA http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/001200_how_to_deal_with_submitted_patches_effectively_using_jira.html Brett was processing some patches today so I asked him how he normally keeps track of patches and his method is to flag email when they come in. I figured I should probably lend a hand so I asked if there was an easy way in JIRA find all the patches. The answer is sort of. What I want is to be able to add a checkbox to an issue where that custom attribute could be searched for easily. I want users to be able to say "I have attached a patch" and then easily pick them all off. In JIRA you can create custom fields, but a checkbox would be nicer. The other problem is that once the issue is created you need to be able to edit the issue, but a user might submit a patch after the issue has been created and most folks creating issues can't edit anything but comments. I wanted something right away so I figured I would create a filter and search for "patch" in the summary, comment and description fields in open issues and that yielded a pretty decent list. So hopefully this will make it easier for any Maven developer to find issues with patches attached because these are the first ones we're going to process!

If you're a user of Maven and you have some fixes please say that you have attached a patch in the description, summary or comment text and we'll be able to process them in an easier fashion because any Maven developer can use the "patch" filter and find issues with patches.

]]> jvanzyl 2005-10-24T02:18:44+00:00 Where to find Maven 2.x Plug-ins http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/001176_where_to_find_maven_2x_plugins.html Someone on the Maven users mailing list unfortunately started a Castor plug-in. This is unfortunate because we already have one! For those of you jumping into the m2 waters it is definitely a good idea to check out our Plug-in Matrix to see if what you need already exists or is being worked on already. A lot of the m2 plug-ins are available as part of the Mojo project at Codehaus.

]]> jvanzyl 2005-09-22T17:06:36+00:00 The POM and the importance of project metadata http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/001056_the_pom_and_the_importance_of_project_metadata.html If you're a user of Maven then you are familiar with the Project Object Model (POM) which is the basic unit of work in Maven. Maven is a project-centric tool and so we attempt to capture the essence of a project in the POM. This includes things like what your project is, where the project lives, where you can find the sources for project, who the developers are on the project and how you can get hold of them, what you need to build the project, the way your project will be built, what form your project will be distributed in, and where it will be distributed from.

By way of the POM, Maven gives users an easy way to describe, in a uniform way, all their projects. Once you know how to work with one Maven project you know how to work with them all whether they be projects of your own, projects within your own organization, or OSS project's that use Maven. Encapsulating project information in the POM allows you to to quickly get a project's build up and running which let's you focus on the project's code which is where a project's value resides.

Once you get a basic project's build working then you can turn to some of the more interesting features like the many report plugins and site generation. These are the tools that let you convey to others what your project is all about. The site is generated in a uniform way which means familiartity with one Maven site means you can easily navigate any Maven site. This is key for project comprehension. Many of these features are pretty good in Maven 1.x but we are working very hard on Maven 2.x to improve the comprehension features of Maven including a revamped site generation mechanism and a new Reporting API.

We hope to encourage the use Maven's standard way of doing things and the use of the POM in general. Our first attempt at this is the release of our Ant tasks for general artifact handling. Brett made Ant task wrappers for our maven-artifact package and released it this morning. We hope this will facilitate the use of Maven's general artifact handling mechanism but more importantly promote the use of our rich body of project metadata. At last count we had approximately 8600 artifacts in the repository most of which we have valid POMs for. That is an incredibly valuable resource.

Many exciting things will emerge as a result of our work in Maven 2.x to inprove the general state of the Maven repository. We have developed a pretty comprehensive tool for converting and validating Maven repositories and so the information we can provide on projects will utlimately carry a great deal of value.

]]> Maven jvanzyl 2005-04-25T06:50:40+00:00 Why Maven uses JAR names with versions http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/001052_why_maven_uses_jar_names_with_versions.html There was a discussion on the mailing list about why the Maven developers chose to mandate the use of a version for artifacts placed in the repository so I thought I would write an entry about it. There are the technical reason for the versioning JARs which allows us to easily operate on a Maven repository but there a simple human usability issue we tried to consider as well. It's very easy to tell what you are dealing with when you are looking at, say, commons-collections-2.0.jar. You know what it is without having to pry the JAR open and look at the manifest.

If you cannot easily tell what it is you're looking at by just looking at an artifact you can very easily make a mistake that can cost your project a lot of time. Take for example the case where you may accidentally or inadvertently place an incompatible version of a JAR somewhere in your build. You get a ClassNotFoundException or a NoClassDefFoundError and you begin your hunt. You will eventually figure out what's causing the problem and you will most likely find the culprit JAR. What's the first question you're going to ask? The first question you're going to ask is "What version of this are we suppose to be using?".

If you build your projects with Maven you get useful things like the POM placed in your JARs and the manifest is richly populated so you can find out whatever you need to know about the artifact. But if you look at a lot of artifacts distributed by third parties they usually won't contain metadata about the project and sometimes the manifest doesn't even include anything but the default two line manifest produced by Ant. Yikes! Take a look at a lot of SUN JARs or JARs from companies like Documentum. They have no useful information in the manifest. I have made mistakes like this myself in the past and have ended up having to go back to distributions and compare JAR sizes to find out what version of an artifact had slipped in. Not fun, and this almost always happens at the most inopportune of times.

So the stipulation of having a version in the artifact was a decision we made not only for technical reasons but to try and help project against simple mistakes which can cost many man hours to fix. Multiply this simple mistake over all the projects using Java and you've got a lot of potential for wasted time.

Some have argued that it is also a waste of time having to change version names in scripts and other project artifacts and our argument to this is that's why we made the POM. So that you have the one place to deal with your version information and we have endeavoured to make Maven take care of this burden for you in your day-to-day work.

We think that you you can have the best of both worlds here. Being able to know exactly what you're looking at when looking at artifacts, which really can save you time in a dire situation, and be able to work easily with changing versions of artifacts when your projects are in flux. To allow rapid, yet safe change, across your projects while still retaining the simple feature of being able to easily distinguish what you have by simply looking at it.

We really believe that this small change in practice, whereby a version is added to the artifact name, provides a great benefit. We're not trying to foist an arbitrary decision on users. We believe that this practice will really save you time and aggravation when dealing with your day-to-day development practices.

]]> jvanzyl 2005-04-22T15:28:50+00:00 I'm looking for a Maven book author for O'Reilly http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000921_im_looking_for_a_maven_book_author_for_oreilly.html Things have become too hectic for me of late, and so I realize I'm not ever going to have time to finish writing the Maven book for O'Reilly. So I'm looking for a person who would be interested in taking over the reigns. Most important is the ability to communicate effectively with the existing Maven developers to ensure accuracy of content and be a thorough, competent researcher as many of the things we would like to write about are, of course, not documented yet. Information will have to be gleaned from the Maven developers and the pace will probably be swift as we would like to get the book underway soon and plan for a release of the book with maven2. Anyone who loves to write, is keen on OSS, and likes Maven is encouraged to contact me directly at jason at maven dot org.

You want to write a book Hani? I know you want to! I promise to use Intercal as the scripting language for plugins in maven2 if you're up for it.

]]> jvanzyl 2004-12-11T16:51:50+00:00 Maven 1.0.2 Released http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000910_maven_102_released.html The Apache Maven team is pleased to announce the release of Maven 1.0.2.

http://maven.apache.org/start/download.html

This release contains further bugfixes since the Maven 1.0 release. In addition, all of the latest stable plugin releases are included, which include both bugfixes and some new features.

We recommend that all users upgrade to this release, in particular those using pre-1.0 betas or release candidates.

Maven is a project management and project comprehension tool. Maven is based
on the concept of a project object model: builds, documentation creation, site
publication, and distribution publication are all controlled from the project
object model. Maven also provides tools to create source metrics, change logs
based directly on source repository, and source cross-references.

To see a list of changes to Maven, please refer to the Changes Report, or the brief summary below:

* [MAVEN-1428] - "Response content length not known"
* [MAVEN-1501] - maven seems not to evaluate .properties of parent pom
* [MAVEN-1502] - Build doesn't fail when dependency can't be downloaded due to wrong permissions
* [MAVEN-1507] - Fails on IBM 1.3 JDK
* [MAVEN-1511] - Jar override does not work when trying to override to SNAPSHOT
* [MAVEN-1518] - Wrong behaviour for non existing overwritten dependency

Please note that each plugin has its own changes report - please refer to the plugins site to see the plugin you are interested in.

We hope you enjoy using Maven! If you have any questions, please consult:

* the FAQ: http://maven.apache.org/faq.html
* the maven-user mailing list: http://maven.apache.org/mail-lists.html

For news and information, see Maven Blogs: http://www.mavenblogs.com/

- The Apache Maven Team

]]> brett 2004-12-07T12:49:08+00:00 Maven 1.0.1 Released http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000885_maven_101_released.html The maven team is pleased to announce the Maven 1.0.1 release!

Download

This release contains bugfixes since the Maven 1.0 release. In addition, all of
the latest stable plugin releases are included, which include both bugfixes and
some new features.

We recommend that all users upgrade to this release, in particular those using
pre-1.0 betas or release candidates.

Maven is a project management and project comprehension tool. Maven is based
on the concept of a project object model: builds, documentation creation, site
publication, and distribution publication are all controlled from the project
object model. Maven also provides tools to create source metrics, change logs
based directly on source repository, and source cross-references.

Changes in this version can be found here:
Changes

Please note that each plugin has its own changes report - please refer to the plugins
site to see the plugin you are interested in.

For news and information, see:
- Maven Blogs

Have fun!
-The Apache Maven Team

]]> brett 2004-11-11T09:06:16+00:00 Maven upload bundles are a success! http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000714_maven_upload_bundles_are_a_success.html After processing a handful of of upload bundles artifacts seem to be getting in to Ibiblio just fine. I think the bottleneck users have complained about has pretty much been eliminated. Someone asked why the POM and license for the artifact are required in every bundle so I made a first attempt at a small explanation here.

]]> jvanzyl 2004-05-12T19:23:12+00:00 Codehaus to Ibiblio sync fires up! http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000713_codehaus_to_ibiblio_sync_fires_up.html As part of the process to get artifacts into Ibiblio more efficiently a sync has been setup between the Codehaus maven repository and the maven repository at ibiblio. This matches the same process that is taking place between Apache and ibiblio and hopefully more of the larger OSS organizations can get involved to make the process of their getting artifacts into Ibiblio an effective one.

]]> jvanzyl 2004-05-12T18:02:32+00:00 Maven user uploads to ibiblio now easier http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000709_maven_user_uploads_to_ibiblio_now_easier.html After going through all the requests for uploads today I discovered that either crucial pieces of information were missing or the instructions provided not being followed at all. In an attempt to remedy the problem I've made a tiny set of tools to semi automate the process of getting artifacts into ibiblio in a timely fashion.

The new instructions are here.

Basically you make an upload bundle and provide a link. Simple. We'll take care of the rest. If you have maven rc2 or later then you already what you need to make an upload bundle.

]]> jvanzyl 2004-05-10T03:39:42+00:00 Improving Maven's ibiblio support for OSS organizations http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000708_improving_mavens_ibiblio_support_for_oss_organizations.html Currently Apache i s the only OSS organization that has a scheduled pull of artifacts into ibiblio, but I would like to change this ASAP. I am working with Bob to setup a similiar pull for Codehaus, but I would like offer pulls to any other largish OSS organizations like OpenSymphony, ObjectWeb and like. In this way I think we could eliminate a good chunk of the requests made via JIRA and drastically shorten the time it takes for the most used artifacts to get into ibiblio.

If any group is interested in this service just drop me a line at jason@maven.org and we should be able to get you rolling in few hours.

]]> jvanzyl 2004-05-10T02:24:16+00:00 O'Reilly Maven Book Articles http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000599_oreilly_maven_book_articles.html For anyone who is interested in shaping the form of the O'Reilly book on Maven you might want to take a peek here. The format for the book is that of a howto/cookbook aimed at developers who need to get stuff done yesterday. As such, the book will consist of series of short articles, each on a specific facet of Maven. If you would like to see something in particular covered in the book please feel free to add to the list of articles that are posted on the Maven wiki link listed above.

]]> jvanzyl 2004-02-10T21:21:00+00:00 Maven appreciation day http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000510_maven_appreciation_day.html It's always nice to hear from folks who are using Maven and actually find it useful :-) Some folks at ILOG dropped me a line to tell me that they use Maven to build their JViews product with Maven. So, of course, I promptly asked for some special OSS licensing: if it's possible to secure the OSS use of JViews in the Maven IDE then there would be no need for a pay version as there would be no developer license and distribution costs. That would be awesome!

]]> jvanzyl 2003-12-16T14:56:33+00:00 SCM project rolls along http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000281_scm_project_rolls_along.html Emmanuel has been busy adding StarTeam support in addition to moving over the some changelog code for ClearCase over from the maven-changelog-plugin. Everything is looking pretty good and when Emmanuel gives the thumbs up I am going to try and integrate the SCM code with Continuum for some maven-centric CI goodness.

]]> jvanzyl 2003-12-06T03:14:39+00:00 Project navigation woes ... http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000280_project_navigation_woes_.html I am certainly not unbiased but I'm finding navigating devlopment sites that don't use Maven irritating. I was interested in looking at the code for Blojsom and generally just wanted to poke around but found something other than a Maven generated site. As plain jane as the Maven generated sites are, it's easy to find things even if only from habit. It's actually been a while now since I've run across a Java project that's not using Maven.

I wish I had collected a sample population of sites for Java projects before Maven was popular so I could easily contrast the before and after. The Maven generated site isn't going to win any graphic desing awards or dazzle anyone but you can find what you need to quickly. Unless, of course, you're Hani "Maven is the spawn of Satan" Suleiman :-)

]]> jvanzyl 2003-12-06T02:55:52+00:00 mavenblogs.com is coming! http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000278_mavenblogscom_is_coming.html In an attempt to try and collect more information about Maven for users I've registered mavenblogs.com (yes, an unabashed and shameless ripoff of javablogs.com). Bob is setting up a little aggregator so by tomorrow hopefully the DNS goop will propagate and we can get started.

What can be done with mavenblogs.com? Hopefully it can become a clearing house for interesting Maven tips and anecdotes but I'm primarily interested in trying to find a way to reward people who contribute to Maven. How so? Well, I think after a little bit of time passes mavenblogs.com will garner enough traffic to stimulate some ad revenue. Then I would like to take the ad revenue and offer it to people who want to improve Maven. It doesn't cost anything really to try the idea and it might be beneficial. The software bounty thing seems to have cropped up in a few places recently so I figure it can't hurt to try.

]]> jvanzyl 2003-12-05T19:29:09+00:00 Maven IDE http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000276_maven_ide.html After some poking around and looking at existing OSS offerings and commercial offerings I've decided on a few commercial packages as the basis of a small Maven IDE.

I've purchased the whole suite of JideSoft components and am going to use the commercial JGoodies suites as well. Karsten, of JGoodies. was kind enough to let me have a copy of the commercial offerings at no charge as the Maven IDE will be OSS. Why use commercial components? Well, I want to get the first version of this tool up and running quickly and unfortunately the vast majority of OSS GUI components are not very good. The JideSoft and JGoodies components look great and have been wonderful to work with so far.

I also want to take the Maven IDE to another level where Werkflow+Drools will be integrated and I plan to use either the YWorks graph package or ILOG's JView components. Both have sophisticated graph packages for editing, monitoring and visualizing workflows. I will definitely use this in my day job where workflows are essential but on the Maven side of things I would like to make a tool to drive a rules-based, workflow driven development process. I need some sophisticated graph visualization to make it effective, the commercial offerings are quite astounding and they really aren't that expensive considering what can be made with them.

It's definitely nice to be back in the land of rich GUIs, it's what I used to do full time. I realize after working with JIRA for a whole day how much I really dislike web applications. JIRA has one of the best web interfaces I've used but web interfaces are just plain tedious. Maybe I'll make a Swing front-end for JIRA :-)

]]> jvanzyl 2003-12-04T04:57:59+00:00 Maven SCM has landed! http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000271_maven_scm_has_landed.html With many thanks to Emmanuel Venisse the Maven SCM code has finally been moved over into the Apache repositories. The SCM project is an attempt to create a simple, powerful API for accessing the various SCM products like CVS, SVN, Perforce and the like. Most likely over the next few weeks Emmanuel will scrub the SCM code and be looking for comments and feedback. We hope people provide lots of feedback as the SCM project will be the basis upon which Continuum will be built. For those who aren't aware Continuum is the Maven-centric continuous integration tool that was slated as a seed project when Maven started and will most likely land in the Apache repositories inside a month now that I have regathered my momentum.

At any rate the code for the SCM project can be found here:

http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/maven-scm/

And the mailing lists are:

scm-dev@maven.apache.org
scm-user@maven.apache.org
scm-cvs@maven.apache.org

]]> jvanzyl 2003-11-30T14:06:31+00:00 New Maven PMC members http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000270_new_maven_pmc_members.html Just a hats off to a few Maven contributors who have given a great deal to the project and have been accepted as Maven PMC members. Many thanks to:

Michal Maczka
Brett Porter
Vincent Massol
Emmanuel Venisse

]]> jvanzyl 2003-11-29T16:36:27+00:00 Maven SCM Project Update http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000269_maven_scm_project_update.html Over the course of this weekend a general SCM API will be checked into the Maven repository at Apache. Emmanuel Vennise, a long time Maven committer, has done the leg work to get the project off the ground doing the first pass at the API and getting checkout, update and changelog support working for CVS and SVN. There is code around to support other SCM products and we're hoping that the project will gain interest rapidly and contributors will add support for all major SCM products in short order.

]]> jvanzyl 2003-11-29T16:20:18+00:00 Maven Wagon has landed! http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000268_maven_wagon_has_landed.html Maven is generally considered to be a single product at Apache but it has always been slated as an umbrella for several projects. Wagon is the first additional project to arrive but there will be more projects added in the coming weeks.

Wagon is the Maven project's general artifact handling library. Wagon will be embedded in Maven itself and has been designed to be embeddable in any Java application as it is not bound to Maven at all. You can take a peek at it here:

http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/maven-wagon/

As mentioned previously on the maven-dev list Wagon will more than likely undergo API changes from others looking at it and from people attempting to embed it. Maven will obviously be one of the first targets, but I will be embedding Wagon in Plexus for general component handling and will play an integral part in Plexus' component repository (a la Doug Schmidt).

Many thanks go to Michal Maczka for doing the vast majority of the work and as such will lead the way on Wagon's development. Thanks also go to Peter Donald, Peter Royal and Emmanuel Venisse for their input and work.

]]> jvanzyl 2003-11-28T17:26:18+00:00 Maven book and user input http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000178_maven_book_and_user_input.html Bob and I have added some pages in the Maven Wiki to keep users informed about the work being done on the Maven book and created a space where users can give us there input. Please feel free to jot down any ideas you have!

]]> jvanzyl 2003-09-30T17:04:43+00:00 Maven plugin migration http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000177_maven_plugin_migration.html Now that 1.0-rc1 is out users have a mechanism whereby plugins can be easily downloaded and installed. So we are now leaning out the core and pushing all non-essential plugins to external repositories. This will allow us to tighten up the core and allow users who have created plugins to share them with greater ease.

]]> jvanzyl 2003-09-29T17:06:25+00:00 Maven 1.0-rc1 released http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000175_maven_10rc1_released.html The Maven team is pleased to announce Release Candidate 1!

maven.apache.org

Maven is a Java project management and project comprehension tool. Maven
is based on the concept of a project object model (POM) in that all the
artifacts produced by Maven are a result of consulting a well defined
model for your project. Builds, documentation, source metrics, and
source cross-references are all controlled by your POM.

Maven has many goals, but in a nutshell Maven aims to make the
developer's life easier by providing a well defined project structure,
well defined development processes to follow, and a coherent body of
documentation that keeps your developers and clients apprised of what's
happening with your project. Maven alleviates a lot of what most
developers consider drudgery and lets them get on with the task at hand.
This is essential in OSS projects where there aren't many people
dedicated to the task of documenting and propagating the critical
information about your project which is necessary in order to attract
potential new developers and clients.

This version is primarily a bugfix release.

Bugs fixed
----------
see
http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&pid=10030&fixfor=10181

Bugs to be fixed for 1.0
------------------------

http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&pid=10030&fixfor=10149

You can find the Maven distributions here:
http://maven.apache.org/builds/release/1.0-rc1/

]]> jvanzyl 2003-09-29T07:07:37+00:00 Coming back to Maven http://blogs.codehaus.org/projects/maven/archives/000172_coming_back_to_maven.html In the last six months there haven't been many significant changes in Maven and that is primarily due to my vigour being sapped by unexpected circumstances. As a result I haven't been much of a leader as far as Maven goes which is something that will be remedied in short order now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. I can usually deal with work in addition to OSS duties but it hasn't been easy in the last while.

At the beginning of the year my father was already ill, and matters were made worse by an accident in which he was t-boned by an SUV on the driver's side. The car was destroyed but with a little help from the 'Jaws of Life' my father managed to come out of it alive, but not unscathed.

Anyone who knows me finds me somewhat headstrong, tenacious, and generally independent. All these attributes I derive directly from my father in whom these qualities are an order of magnitude more intense. When my father regained consciousness from the accident he did not wake up the same person. You can only imagine what it might feel like to find every task difficult after a life time of being able to do anything. Frustrating, saddening and almost enough to drive you over the edge. Not only for my father but for everyone around him watching him go through this process. Not a pleasant experience to say the least. With a lot of help from a lot of people the process has been made manageable and things are looking up now and it seems everything will return to a state of relative normalcy.

Bob has been really supportive throughout the whole ordeal, people at work have been very understanding as I haven't been as productive as usual, and Dion and Ben have been absolutely great holding things together in Maven land as I have been absent for the most part of late.

I plan to jump back into the mix and one of first tasks is to flesh out an outline for a Maven book. Bob and I are actually going to do this together in Amsterdam next week and when finished we will show it to the nice people at O'Reilly :-) We are also going to make the outline available to Maven users so we can get some feedback before going to far along.

Hopefully things will roll along quickly so look here as I will be using this blog to jot down ideas to keep users informed about the Maven book and Maven in general.

]]> jvanzyl 2003-09-27T22:36:03+00:00