Comments on: 25 Things I Hate about Maven

By: MavenSux

MavenSux — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:10:08 +0000

Wow Maven sucks pretty bad. About time people started realizing it – I remember years ago (you can still find the posts online) when people would rave about it and swear by it. Any bad words said about it would be immediately pummeled by a mass following of Maven fanboys rationalizing and making excuses. Now, years later, where are we? Maven sucks has become a common phrase which many people agree with now. AJAX (btw AJAX sucks) is going down a similar path now, only the ‘framework bonanza’ has managed to stave off people’s realization that it, in fact, does suck. DOM/DHTML/JavaScript – what a pile of crap. The realization will come here too, once the hidden costs appear, and once the jokers (probably the same responsible for EJB2..) start getting bored of constantly updating their “AJAX frameworks” (and all the applications dependent on them to fix various browser problems), ‘The Search for the Next Big Buzzword’ will begin.

When will we learn that there is no magic bullet in IT? When will we learn that complex “magic” black box solutions and “fully automated autoconfig super code generating database agnostic multi-platform one-size-fits-all perfect solutions” are simply an unrealistic fantasy? When will we learn that sometimes the “quick hack” (AJAX) shortcut to getting something done usually ends up backfiring at the end of the day? (Hint: Use a VM!)

Really…. Maven? Stop wasting time with this rubbish, spend a few minutes to create a custom Ant build file, and spend some time working on the actual task at hand.

By: Maven: A Misbehavin’ Build Tool? « O'Really?

Maven: A Misbehavin’ Build Tool? « O'Really? — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:00:35 +0000

[...] argumentative and often very extended. See why does maven have such a bad reputation? and 25 things I hate about Maven for [...]

By: Edwin

Edwin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:05:19 +0000

My main issue with maven in the past has been its documentation (your point #23), but in my opinion it's been getting better since the appearance of books like Better Builds with Maven and Maven the Definitive Guide. Resolving artifacts for NoClassDefFoundErrors (your point #12) has also gotten a little easier since the appearance of jarvana.com. If you're in Eclipse, the m2eclipse plugin can perform similar searches. Maven has a steep learning curve, and I can still get frustrated trying to figure out to configure my pom files, but I still think it's a great tool, and the price is right.

By: Kamran

Kamran — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:48:48 +0000

I moved to Maven to get away from Ant. I also found that Maven and Ant doesn’t really go together that well. And although it is much easier to write maven plugins in Ant, it is much better to write them in Java or other technologies because of the Maven-Ant inconsistencies you described above. When you move to Maven, think Maven not Ant.

By: David Yu

David Yu — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:37:30 +0000

Wow, you must love ant so much

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:47:39 +0000

For #2, this plugin might be what you're looking for: Versions Maven Plugin

By: Calvin

Calvin — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:32:28 +0000

Using properties in #2 is a hack. If you want to change the version of the parent POM, you have to update all the child POMs to reference the correct version of the parent. The hack is that ppl workaround this by setting the parent POM to a version number that never changes. Doing this makes it harder for people to understand what’s going on in the build unless they know of the workaround.

I would say #5 is a benefit and a drawback. It’s a drawback in that when you update Maven, it’s not real easy to figure out if your existing versions of the plugins work on the current version of Maven, or even what versions of plugins works well with each other.

As for #13, I can only say it didn’t work me. And I’m too far removed from it to want to recall. I’m sure the simple cases like project.build.directory work, but not necessarily useful edge cases. This is a common pattern with Maven. I do remember that everything on this list I looked into pretty thoroughly though, going into the Maven source if I have to.

-Calvin

By: Trevor

Trevor — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:40:27 +0000

If I understand #2 correctly, I think you are mistaken. You can use properties to solve this problem. Just define the version in the parent and reference it in the children. You can then change the version in the parent without having to change it in all the children.

Isn’t #5 a benefit instead of a drawback? Avoiding unexpected breakage is the point of specifying an explicit plugin version number.

#13 is false. I’ve been able to use properties such as project.build.directory in my AntRun plugin configurations with no problem.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:37:14 +0000

So I’ve had reading this blog post on my to-do list for the last week. I think you hit every nail on the head of all the BS we’ve had to deal with from Maven2 over the last six months. Gah, I hate Maven2; in fact, I think they set us up the bomb.