Ode to Maven

It uses Maven.

At first, I thought to myself, "This is not a good thing." Not just because it meant that I had to go download Maven, but because every previous encounter I've had with Maven has ended rather unpleasantly... except I have to admit, the relief of not using Maven any more, that was pretty pleasant. (It's sort of like the euphoria you get when you finally lose a really crappy job. "Boy, I hated washing cars, every second I was there. I may not have a job, but man, am I happy to be gone!")

Well, I fired up a warning flare when I got Rome, because I dislike builds that want to go to the network in order to build. I use a laptop, a frequently disconnected one, which is why it's able to stay on my lap. No wires good, some wires bad, right? (I'm conveniently ignoring my use of a USB mouse, 100% of the time.) The developers, though, like Maven, because it does everything for them - like, download dependent jars (by version!), run checkstyle, javadoc, run tests, generate more reports about your code than I can easily describe - I'm stunned, really.

The only problem is that I don't want most of that.

If I'm dependent on a versioned jar file, I include it in the build.

If I want to run checkstyle, I have an Ant task do that.

If I want to generate docs, I have an Ant task to do that.

If I want to run tests, I have an Ant task to do that.

If I want to generate reports about my code, I wonder who slipped something funky in my drink that drove me into retarded-manager mode.

What's more, it's nontrivial to actually change the build. Rome doesn't have tests that I saw. I can understand why - getting them in the build isn't the easiest thing. (In Ant, of course, it's nothing to do. Compile, add a JUnit task.) Adding resources to the Maven build is not impossible, but... sheesh, I have to LOOK for stuff.

And it takes six minutes to run a Maven build that doesn't even build all modules!

I sputter. I stutter. I'm aghast.

It takes longer to build the project with Maven than it did to add the code I wanted, plus the test to make sure it worked properly. I can't even quickly add some of the mechanisms plus their tests, because Maven takes too freakin' long - by the time Maven's done, I've forgotten what it was I was trying to do.

Maybe maven is the great white hope of build tools. Maybe my inexperience with it means that I'm finding it very difficult to do the simple things I want to do, and it's all my fault that Maven makes me want to puke.

Honestly, though... if my tool requires me to learn a lot, and costs me a lot of time in the process of development, I've got to find a better tool because this one sucks. It makes it difficult to use an IDE, because it means dependencies are splattered into the Maven structure instead of the project structure. It's verbose and slow. I'd be done by now if I'd had a decent build process, and I have been trying (up to now) to not duplicate the work they've put into creating the Maven structure, because they like Maven and I hate wasting effort. For me, though, Maven is so bad that it disrupts the development process and I've decided that I won't use it.