[jira] Updated: (MASSEMBLY-151) Documentation for the assembly plugin is utterly confusing

["John Casey (JIRA)" <ji...@codehaus.org>]

     [ http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MASSEMBLY-151?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

John Casey updated MASSEMBLY-151:
---------------------------------

    Fix Version/s:     (was: 2.2-beta-3)
                   2.2

I've overhauled the javadoc descriptions for the different mojos in this plugin, which is what drives the descriptions that show up on the generated website. I'm going to have to take a deeper look at the descriptor documentation for the 2.2-final release (in particular, the discussions of how to use outputFileNameMapping and probably outputDirectory expressions properly).

> Documentation for the assembly plugin is utterly confusing
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: MASSEMBLY-151
>                 URL: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MASSEMBLY-151
>             Project: Maven 2.x Assembly Plugin
>          Issue Type: Bug
>    Affects Versions: 2.1, 2.2
>            Reporter: Nigel Magnay
>             Fix For: 2.2
>
>
> This is going to come across as a whinge, I'm afraid, but the assembly plugin is a fairly important vital component in M2; I find it very confusing and I've been using it for a bit. I have observed it putting off other people from using m2 at all, which is I think a shame.
> I'd document it myself, but I don't understand the differences between some of the goals (and I don't understand why the fix in MASSEMBLY-97 is neccessary).
> In the goals page,there's lots of options that seem to overlap or do the same thing. There's no clue (other than trial and error) as to why some of them will work some times, and some will not (e.g. in multiproject builds). What's worse is some of the problems only appear in specific circumstances (E.g. doing multiprojects in a 'clean' build'). 
> This either needs documenting, or (better), fixing in the code. We have (from the site):
>  assembly:assembly    	Assemble an application bundle or distribution from an assembly descriptor.
> Good, seems logical to me
> assembly:unpack 	Unpack project dependencies. Currently supports dependencies of type jar and zip.
> The reverse. Yep.
> assembly:attached 	Assemble an application bundle or distribution from an assembly descriptor. Do not specify a phase, so make it usable in a reactor environment where forking would create issues.
> Erk? How should a user read this? To me "usable in a reactor environment where forking would create issues" reads to me as "there's a bug in assembly:assembly if used in a multiproject build". 
> - it assumes that the user knows a multi project build is a 'reactor' build
> - why can't assembly:assembly be fixed so it does work in multiproject builds? Why can't it detect the environment, and do the 'right thing' (or at the very least spit out a warning) ?
> This is just inviting the user to pick the wrong goal.
> assembly:directory 	Assemble an application bundle or distribution.
> Without a descriptor? If I click the link to the goal parameters for this or for assembly:assembly, I get identical pages of parameters. How is this different?
> assembly:directory-inline 	Assemble an application bundle or distribution from an assembly descriptor without launching a parallel lifecycle build.
> In what scenarios would I as a user need this? Is it for a bug workaround? Would it not be better as a parameter to turn off/on "parallel lifecycle build" ?
> assembly:single 	Assemble an application bundle or distribution from an assembly descriptor. Do not specify a phase, so make it usable in a reactor environment where forking would create issues. Do not specify it as an aggregator, so it is only for a single project. Both cases aid it in working around issues with the Maven lifecycle that should be addressed in Maven 2.1.
> A whole heap of information that seems to boil down to "there is a bug", and a heap of confusing terminology ("do not specify it as an aggregator").  
> When should this be used ? Every time you actually want assembly:assembly in a multiproject build? How is it different to assembly:attached?
> It seems to me that the plugin does 2 things. (pack things, unpack things). All these additional goals seem to be (I can't tell this) workarounds for bugs. 
> Why can't we just have
> assembly:assembly
> and
> assembly:unpack
> and make the plugin work properly? If multiproject builds fail on fork, then stop the plugin from forking until it can be fixed (or keep it as a cryptic option for people that really want to optimise their builds rather than confusing new customers).

-- 
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
-
If you think it was sent incorrectly contact one of the administrators: http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/Administrators.jspa
-
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira