[wellpast]

I wholeheartedly disagree with this post, though I do like his conceptual framework of composable and contextual abstractions.

I've worked on countless Maven builds and have done everything under the sun. Maven's plugin system allows you to ultimately achieve whatever you need out of your build--in the 10% case that you have a need that isn't already covered by the varied plethora of plugins out there. You can even call out to Ant using the antrun plugin.

I've found so much simplicity, reliability, continued payoff in my use of Maven. I've heard complaints but usually from people that refuse to understand how it functions declaratively.

Declarative systems like Maven ask that you learn something first, and then reward you infinitely if you do; imperative systems let you do something immediately without learning a model, but then make you infinitely pay for it.

[frugalmail]

brilliant summary.