Apache Maven to be removed from Karmic?

John Moser john.r.moser at gmail.com
Thu Oct 15 17:29:17 UTC 2009


On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Dustin Kirkland <kirkland at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 11:53 AM, John Moser <john.r.moser at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Alvin Thompson
>> <alvin at thompsonlogic.com> wrote:
>>> First, as a Java developer I hope this doesn't happen as Maven is pretty
>>> much required for Java development (at least in the U.S.).
>>
>> I laughed.
>>
>> Your pet project is NOT "pretty much required for X" in any global
>> scope.  I've hardly seen any Java shops, and the ones I did... well
>> I've never seen Maven.  Most of the bigger shops are moving to the
>> next buzzword anyway:  .NET (why the hell do people do this?)
>
> Hi John-
>
> I'm not a Java developer, but I certainly know of Maven.  It is as
> essential to Java programmers as Make is to C programmers.
>

I think he's overstating the popularity and necessity of a particular
package, to a large degree.  There are plenty of Java programs in
Ubuntu; with Maven being dropped, they should all cease to build, and
also be dropped (imagine dropping gmake).  Unless, of course, Maven
isn't really essential to anything.

I could state that a LiveCD build of Nexuiz is essential to a
successful Linux build, because everyone wants to play FPS games and
we can't have a real operating system if you can't just reboot your
computer onto a cleanroom disc with Nexuiz in it.  While Nexuiz does
exist, and is fun, it's hardly essential for anything (even flexing
Ubuntu as a gaming platform), and a LiveCD boot to run a single
application is obviously just a pet project of mine.

I will continue to laugh at people who present anything with *a* user
base as something *essential* to an *entire* class of users, unless it
obviously is and thus dropping it would horribly break Ubuntu's
functionality or drastically alter the user experience for the entire
install base (i.e. libc-dev for C programmers, OpenOffice.org-Writer
or Firefox getting dropped, etc).  Something only used by a subset of
a subset of the userbase isn't "required" for that whole subset to
function, just the further subset thereof.

Again, case in point, if Ubuntu drops Maven and suddenly every Java
application fails to build on the BS, then Maven is "required" for
Java programming.

> I can't weigh in on the discussion about removing Maven, but I don't
> think it's appropriate to attack Alvin for stating his support of
> Maven in Ubuntu.
>
> :-Dustin
>




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