Maven 3 polyglot and/or attribute based configuration

[Niels B Nielsen <ni...@jpmorgan.com>]

Hi,

I have long been a user of Maven, but disfavoured the xml verbosity. With Maven 3 I am aware of the polyglot capabilities of using Groovy or YAML for pom files, but I would still prefer the xml syntax for a while.

A few years ago, a JIRA was raised [1], and an experimental branch created as a proof-of-concept, introducing attributed based configuration, having entities like:

<dependencies>
  <dependency groupId="junit" artifactId="junit" version="3.8.1" scope="test"/>
</dependencies>

Which I think is a good format. It is easier to compact a full pom file and see what goes on, and it still verifies against a DTD. However, it may contradict existing tools and behaviours.
Alternatively mix the current model with a namespaced schema-extension, which could provide attributed based primitives for the most common items.

Does anyone know if this has been reconsider inside Maven 3 at all or is the polyglot solution the path to the future maven configuration?


Regards


Niels B Nielsen | Lead Engineer
J.P. Morgan     | IBTech Global Rates Derivatives

[1] http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-3397



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