Status of using Maven with Seam

[gonorrhea]

Anybody know what the official status is of using Maven with Seam 2/3?  or even Web Beans RI?

I saw some JIRAs with DAllen commenting that it's not ready but not sure if that's still valid now (see below).

In Yuan et al, 2nd ed., Appendix C covers Using Maven and states we have seen an increasing adoption of Maven to manage builds.  Maven provides declarative dependency management, which fits well with Seam applications since Seam integrates many third-party libraries and frameworks.

But what about the restrictive Maven 2 project structure?

SiA:

The layout of a seam-gen project isn’t what you might consider standard, nor does it follow the popular Maven 2 structure.

So does that mean if you use Maven for a Seam project you can't use seam-gen for a new project or if you do, it's a pain to restructure the project?

In the Seam 2.1.1.GA distro, there are 28 *pom.xml references.  So Seam is internally using Maven to a certain extent.

This is somewhat confusing.  Can someone plz shed some light on this?  thx.

Dan Allen - 22/Oct/08 02:25 AM
I'm going to make a general comment, but keep the m2eclipse discussion going around it.

I know many of you have waited a long time for this issue to be addressed. We'll get there, I promise. That said, I want Seam to have an official archetype so people don't have to go hunting the web for something that may or may not be up to date. I see too many initiatives trying to talk at once and not listening and learning from each other. We can come to some sort of a consensus in the Seam SVN tree. We would certainly encourage you to use this official archetype as a starting point and customize it to suit your needs. That's how I see it at least. I should be kicking off the initiative sometime soon.

source: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBSEAM-2026

[gonorrhea]

Here's the other post from DAllen regarding this topic:

Dan Allen - 23/Oct/08 11:57 AM
I welcome the idea of Maven's archetype plugin becoming more flexible. The biggest issue right now is that like many Maven features in the past, it ain't ready yet. Therefore, it's not useful yet.

I want to briefly mention (since this is not a forum and we shouldn't be threading opinions) why I don't think Maven is best for our users. First, 'ant explode' is extremely fast and that is not something Maven can do because it has to go through its whole life cycle. Plus, Maven does not have built-in support for dual source directories, so doing hot deployment of Java classes is a huge hack. Times will change I am sure, but seam-gen has to stick with what works today and evolve as time goes on.

Ok, so out for Seam 2 and Maven 2 I guess?

Other problems reported here: http://seamframework.org/Community/MavenSeamArchetype

So what about Seam 3 and/or Maven 2/3?

[luxspes]

I am curious, what do you need from Maven that you can not get by integrating Ant with Ivy?

[gonorrhea]

There was another thread I started on here about the build number and one guy recommended Maven as the best solution.  Can I do that mojo plugin with Ivy instead of Maven?  Sorry, I have no experience with Maven or Ivy...

[luxspes]

Yes, I also answered to that post, proposing you to use Ivy build number management task, and I see no advantage in the Maven solution over the Ivy solution that I proposed.

Can you explain me exactly what feature of mojo did you find particularly advantageous?

[gonorrhea]

Francisco Peredo wrote on May 27, 2009 01:02:


Yes, I also answered to that post, proposing you to use Ivy build number management task, and I see no advantage in the Maven solution over the Ivy solution that I proposed.

Can you explain me exactly what feature of mojo did you find particularly advantageous?

The problem is I didn't look at the Ivy alternative.  I just did.  It looks very similar but makes no explicit reference to svn.  This is a possible alternative then as I've heard it's not too difficult to incorporate Ivy with Ant (as compared to using Maven only and changing your project structure, etc.)

thx for the tip!

[luxspes]

Arbi Sookazian wrote on May 27, 2009 17:23:



The problem is I didn't look at the Ivy alternative.  I just did.  It looks very similar but makes no explicit reference to svn.

Well, I integrated it with svn using the ivysvn project.

This is a possible alternative then as I've heard it's not too difficult to incorporate Ivy with Ant (as compared to using Maven only and changing your project structure, etc.)

thx for the tip!

In my experience, integrating Ant with Ivy is lot easier than learning to use Maven. I also do not like Maven because with Maven is the Maven way or the highway. You can not bend Maven to you will.

[gonorrhea]

There are WAY too many frameworks that are required in Java EE nowadays.  IMHO it's better to be a .NET developer or LAMP, etc.

I'm really getting tired of reading all these specs and books and don't have the luxury of time anymore.

JEE = flexibility and choice
.NET = easier life and productivity

Which do you really prefer at the end of the day?

You want to build your app and go home and spend time with your hobbies and family, etc.

JEE just gets worse and worse year after year in this regard...