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Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:23:04 +0200
From: Grzegorz Kossakowski <grek@tuffmail.com>
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To: dev@cocoon.apache.org
Subject: Re: Renaming Corona to Cocoon 3.0 and infrastructure
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Sylvain Wallez pisze:
> I can't say what problems there are _now_ since I don't build Cocoon 
> anymore. Hopefully it works now, and I was referring to the past: when 
> the move to Maven was started, the 2.2 build was mostly broken for 
> months, which drained an incredible amount of energy away from the 
> project, either because people got discouraged by this broken build 
> (e.g. me), or because they invested their volunteer time in 
> understanding Maven (e.g. Jorg Heymans) rather than developing Cocoon.
> 
> I'm glad it seems to work now, but the amount of energy needed to setup 
> and maintain this build system (remember, it's _just_ a build system) 
> has been astronomical.

I've been working with Maven (mainly when working with Cocoon) for more than year and I can agree on 
main point of Maven critics that Maven is flawed.
My personal opinion is that basic ideas behind Maven are correct but implementation is totally 
broken. Or at least it was at the beginning because now, thanks to many eye balls, it seems to 
improve from release to release.

I was wondering many times if there is any other choice for us. Given the amount energy we've put 
into mavenization process any switch is impossible so such discussion could be only theoretical. 
Still I would enjoy reading about some alternatives because this could put my (and probably others) 
thinking into right direction thus, eventually improving our existing infrastructure.

There is one statement that I don't agree: Maven is not just a build system. If it was only a build 
system I would be the first one to propose dropping Maven completely because of its implementation. 
For me, Maven is the whole ecosystem which consists of good practices when it comes to your 
project's structure, Maven repository (the killer feature IMHO) and integration with so many systems 
acting around basic build process.

What I would prefer is to take a lesson from our past experience but still focus on the future. I 
strongly believe that we have reached this stage when people can happily focus on developing Cocoon 
and not on developing Cocoon's infrastructure thus I would like to invite all old-timers to join our 
forces and provide the best of Cocoon experience ever. I strongly believe we have all foundations 
needed for that now.

> It's very nice to see people using 2.2, but I have the impression that 
> most of the 2.2-related questions are related to maven-isms, artifacts, 
> poms, etc. Without wanting to sound harsh, I'm wondering whether this 
> community has learned to live over time with some sort of chronic 
> disease, and is so used to it now that it doesn't even realize that life 
> could be easier without it.

Most of these questions come from the confusion about splitting up Cocoon into smaller pieces. And 
even more questions come from the fact that people starting with 2.2 are still trying to build it 
themselves because that was done in 2.1. If you use released versions then you will have no problem 
with dependencies, missing artifacts, etc.
When you checkout trunk and try to build it then I would say that it should be no surprise that 
sometimes you get into troubles, right?

I would really like to know what kind of chronic disease you see Sylvain. I don't deny there might 
be one so if you would have shared your observations with rest community we could start to think 
about improving it in the future.

> Note that I said "could" and not "would" since ultimately the 
> people-that-do decide what they prefer. And yes I'm a retired old-timer 
> here, but I still care for this community where I learned so much.

For me it would be interesting to see if one of "retired old-timers" could try to spend some time on 
playing with trunk just to gather some experience. Certainly, such "external" audit by some of the 
most honored members of this community would be a blessing experience only if it would allow to 
bring closer our stances.

-- 
Best regards,
Grzegorz Kossakowski