I agree with a lot of what has been said:
* Deprecate ANT - New Project (don't remove)
* Keep ANT for existing projects
Also, I agree that Maven can seem quite overwhelming at first. I have
been using it for only about a year now, and still remember the OMG
experience when I first looked at Maven. However, with a little
persistence, and a lot of research, I was able to get past that. IT WAS
WORTH IT! Maven is NOT "the be all and end all". But it does work. I
have been using it for many small projects, including my own libraries
and a number of open source projects (https://github.com/bewillcott
<https://github.com/bewillcott>).
My environment:
* ASUS Laptop
* I7
* 12Gb RAM
* 1 Tb SSD
* Fedora Linux 32
* JDK 15
* NB 12.1
I first had a problem with the unpacking of the Maven index when I only
had 4Gb RAM, as Linux was set-up with /tmp as a RAM Drive using only 1Gb
of RAM. However once I upgraded the RAM I had no further problems. NB
is set to update the Maven index once a week, so this is not a problem
either.
The benefits of using Maven are as extensive as the Maven repository.
Once you know what the dependencies are that you need, adding then is
quite simple. I believe that someone just starting out would greatly
benefit from going straight into Maven, by-passing Ant altogether.
Further, the process of converting existing projects would be of long
term benefit, and would simplify the on-going support of the project.
I would like to offer my assistance in the conversion process - as an
example/training exercise so that you will know how to do it yourself -
"If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; If you teach a man to
fish, he eats for a lifetime."(#
<https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/give-a-man-a-fish.html>).
Brad.
On 21/4/21 1:10 am, Lisa Ruby wrote:
For those of you who have used Maven for a long time it may seem
simple and straightforward, but for those of us who haven't it's not.
I've struggled to try and understand it and figure out how to use it
for my software project and gave up. And it's a huge amount of
overhead, extra disk space usage, and more bits and pieces to keep
track of that isn't justifiable for small simple projects. ANT works
just fine for me, and I will keep using it for as long as I possibly
can. I need to focus my time on getting my software out, not on the
tools I have to use to do it.
Lisa
On 4/20/2021 10:00 AM, Geertjan Wielenga wrote:
I agree, the Ant-based project creation should be removed and I
disagree that there should be any kind of conversion between Ant and
Maven -- that simply will never work and we'll spend the rest of our
days fixing bugs in that. To convert from Ant to Maven: create a new
Maven project and copy the Java source files from your Ant project
into it.
Gj
On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 6:58 PM <pszud...@throwarock.com
<mailto:pszud...@throwarock.com>> wrote:
Honestly, I think NB should have an internal conversation about
removing the "new project" support for Ant projects, while still
being able to open existing ones. It just confuses a lot of
people if they're not going to be supported.
I agree, if and ONLY if you provide at least a rudimentary way to
convert ANT projects to Maven projects. I have been struggling
with this issue too long. I have hundreds of Ant based projects
that I would love to turn over immediately to Maven... but I
can't , am struggling, and haven't coded a darn line in two
months... I used to code 10 hours a day ... and now...
embarrassed by my inability to convert.,.
I exaggerate a bit, I still code in "Old" Netbeans 8.2, but I
know the days are numbered...
On 2021-04-20 08:23, Will Hartung wrote:
On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 12:55 AM Wayne Gemmell | Connect
<wa...@connect-mobile.co.za <mailto:wa...@connect-mobile.co.za>>
wrote:
Is the perception that nobody does Maven EAR's anymore or
that nobody uses EARs? I have a web app that has given me no
shortage of issuse with ant.
I'm trying to move it to Maven. If nobody is using maven
then I need to move to something else. If nobody is using
EAR's anymore then I'm pretty stuck figuring out this Maven
issue.
Well, it's several things.
EARs are less popular because their necessity has been greatly
reduced. Session beans can be placed in WARs now, so for many
use cases, a WAR is completely adequate to the task.
However, it's not suitable for all use cases.
Notably, MDBs can not be deployed in WARs. But only as an EJB
either deployed standalone, or bundled within an EAR.
With the hue and cry over micro services and "down with the
monolith", just the idea of a large application bundled in a EAR
is falling out of favor.
Also, there's a history of advocacy underlying this. Sun used
NetBeans as a mechanism to advocate for Java and Java EE. It
behooved them to have something like NetBeans to make Java EE
development easier. So, it was important for NetBeans to have
really first class Java EE support. Bundling the Java EE wizards
and templates along with Glassfish all helped promote that.
Of course, now, with the great Java Diaspora out of Oracle, the
goals and drivers are different.
For your project, if all you have is a web app and some session
beans, then a simple WAR file is good to go. The Ant projects
seem to essentially be deprecated now, so I would not rely on
those for anything. If practical, especially if your project is
young, I would migrate it to Maven. The Maven WAR is a pretty
simple project and seems to work ok. Maven isn't going away any
time soon, Gradle, it's primary competitor, doesn't really have
the traction to overcome it yet, and it's been going for some
time. If nothing else, the pom.xml file has become a de facto
portable project format if, for nothing else, to capture
dependencies.
Honestly, I think NB should have an internal conversation about
removing the "new project" support for Ant projects, while still
being able to open existing ones. It just confuses a lot of
people if they're not going to be supported.
And I still haven't heard any concrete position the project has
on internalizing Maven archetypes used for project wizards, or
the process of adopting that.
Legacy archetypes that used to work in NB 8 are now failing
because they've vanished from Maven central. So, an external
dependency broke an internal feature.
Feel free to follow up with specific questions about getting
your project to work and/or converted to Maven.
Regards,
Will Hartung
