Steve: Developing on the Edge - Build tool choices should not be transitive

Steve: Developing on the Edge

Thoughts on development, Web-services, technology and mountains.

27Jun
Fri2008

Build tool choices should not be transitive

I haven't said anything negative about Maven for while, sorry. Here goes. Deepal Jayasinghe of the Axis2 team is being critical of the apache ODE team, because they aren't using the same build tool as that which he has chosen to use.

So, Deepal is critising a fellow Apache team for not following or not caring about his decisions. And that strikes me as wrong. They publish their stuff to the central repository, they just happen to have made a different choice about build process. And so what? You don't say "I won't use this linux tool because it was edited using VI; or you won't use a windows application because it was built with Visual Studio and tested using real people rather than a decent test framework. Engineering choices should not be transitive, except where they affect the quality of the deliverables. If you can't pull the artifacts generated by an existing Java project into your build, well, it's your build process that is at fault, not theirs.

Posted by steve at 14:39

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	buildr for ODE was an outcome, not a choicereply to this thread On 27 June 2008 at 23: 39 Paul Brown commented: I dropped Deepal a comment suggesting that he come by the ode-dev list so we can figure out how to get him the snapshots he needs. That said, ODE's use of buildr (and to a reasonably extent buildr's very existence!) was the outcome of long-running frustrations with using Maven during and prior to incubation of the project at Apache.
	This is how I see my worldreply to this thread On 30 June 2008 at 07: 12 Deepal commented: I am sorry I did not criticize build system that Apache ODE has, what I told was if we can have a maven build system in Apache ODE. Then that helps a lot for developer like us. I have to tell that I really like ODE and will start to continue that soon as well. So there is no need to criticize the project. http://blogs.deepal.org/