I don’t want to just jump on Maven-bashing bandwagon here, but a casual perusal of my previous posts will show that I talk about Maven a lot. This is going to be another one of those posts.
I’ve been starting to play with Google App Engine, both for personal projects and at work. Since most of my environments are Maven-based, I thought I’d go out and find a Maven Archetype or some kind of a POM file to bring these projects into my environment. I did find several blog posts trying to help: here, here, etc… The annoying thing you’ll notice on those blog posts is that Brian Fox ((formerly?) of Sonatype) posts a comment pointing towards Jason van Zyl’s post describing his efforts to Maven-ize the GAE SDK.
That would be all well and good if things had actually progressed. If you look at JvZ’s post, you’ll see he ends with “hopefully I’ll be able to get this out for Maven users by the end of the week!” What happens after that? Bupkis, nil, nothing, NADA!
There’s comments as late as Dec ’09 expressing interest to use and/or help with the effort. But, there is NO RESPONSE from anyone at Sonatype.
I just find it galling that Sonatype would go on an all-out publicity spree talking people out of working on their own because JvZ himself was going to bring his skills to bear on the problem, only to completely fizzle out. I suspect the community at large would have been better off if those 4 or 5 early Maven + GAE adopters had continued on their own path, even if JvZ had succeeded.
Again: my patience with Maven/JvZ is waning. I’m eager to see what comes along next to take its place.
