Maven Is Cooler than you think...

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has heard people curse Maven. But Maven is cooler than you think. Back in the day when I wanted to start a project I always had to get a whole bunch of gunk setup before I even wrote a line of code. Especially when trying a new framework or tool. Today I was whipping up a new project for a simple micro-benchmark on some Terracotta stuff and it reminded me why Maven really can be quite awesome. It took me 10 minutes and about 7 steps. The next time around I won't need to do the installs and then it's 4 steps.

These were the steps I took to get started:

1) Install Maven 

2) Used the Pojo Archetype to create the build and test environment for my project.

- Creates a Mavenized directory structure ready for build, test, run etc. Hooks up to Terracotta maven plugin as well.

- make sure you replace the group id and project id in the command line.

updated - with the latest eclipse plugin this is unnecessary

X 3) In my new project directory type: "mvn eclispe:m2eclipse"

- This takes your Maven project and readies it for eclipse

4) Install the Maven Eclipse Plugin (I already had eclipse installed)

- Makes dealing with Maven from eclipse much easier

5) Install Terracotta Eclipse Plugin

- Makes dealing with Terracotta from eclipse much easier

6) File-> Import-> Maven projects and import your project into eclipse

- Loads up the project directory created from the archetype into Eclipse

7) Select the project and hit Terracotta->Add Terracotta Nature

What you end up with here is a complete project setup ready to be built and tested from both Eclipse and the command line using Maven.

Literally took me about 10 minutes to get started. Notice what you didn't have to do.

1) Didn't have to build a pom.xml or other kind of build file

2) Didn't have to download or install Terracotta or any of it's pieces

3) Didn't have to think about your directory structures, where you want to put your tests, how you want to run those tests

4) Didn't have to figure out how to do all this stuff in Eclipse or the commandline

Sure, Maven can be challenging at times, but in cases like this, when the vendors have things setup for you, it can be a huge time saver.

update:

Looks like we've reduced the number of steps to 6 the first time and 3 after that. If we take the guy's idea about auto-applying the Terracotta Nature in archetype we could reduce it to 5 and 2.