$Revision: 1.9 $	$Name: $	$Date: 2006/04/13 13:54:09 $	Working with maven 2
$Source: /ppw/training/maven/repository/maven2/src/html/whatIsMaven.html,v $

What is maven?

According to the maven site:

Spin-off of Jakarta Turbine
Originally:
- Standard way to build projects
- Clear definition of a project
- Easy way to publish project information (OSS)
- Way to share jars accross projects
Primary goal: allow a developer to comprehend the complete state of a project in the shortest time , through:
- Easy build process
- Uniform build system
- Quality project information
  - ChangeLog, cross-reference, mailing lists, dependencies, unit test reports, test coverage reports, …
- Guidelines for best practices
- Transparant migration to new features
[…�] an attempt to apply patterns to a project's build infrastructure in order to promote comprehension and productivity by providing a clear path in the use of best practices.

Versus `make` and `ant`

make is a procedural language that let's you program build scripts
ant is a programming language that let's you program build scripts
- using coarse-grained components
  - wrapping around existing and new tools
- that have a more or less uniform API
- and has very good support for transitive target dependencies
- ~ Prolog, really heavy on the side effects
  - declarative, logic programming / procedural
maven is a declarative description of you project's metadata
- with standardized build script for all sorts of targets
- extensible and customizable
(automake ~ make build script generator, based on standardized build protocols)
The difference between make and ant, and maven is like the difference between a library and a framework
- The algorithm is defined (template)
- What it does specifically is left open (hooks)

With maven, build configurations are portable with zero effort to another
- Machine
- Developer
- Architecture
This is not trivial
- All file references need to be relative
- Environment must be completely controlled
- Completely independent of specific file system