[jbosstools-dev] Maven Tools : What's next?

[Fred Bricon]

After Alexey's post on the future of CDI tooling in JBT 4.X/JBDS 6.X, 
here's my take on the major changes happening in our Maven tooling in JBT :

1/ Although not fully Maven related : rework the JBoss Central 
Experience wrt our Maven archetypes : we'll provide the ability to 
better handle archetype/runtime compatibility, add the possibility to 
generate "blank" projects. All that should be made possible thanks to 
the JBoss Developper Framework Stacks initiative 
(https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBIDE-12472). Ideally the Stacks 
approach should be extended to all our project examples.

2/ Provide the best Eclipse to Maven Conversion experience possible.
  We'll release a first iteration of a Classpath Dependency -> Maven 
Dependency conversion in M1 https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBIDE-8973
But this will need to be improved : support conversion of component 
dependencies (from EAR projects), ability to convert jars (or a 
selection of jars) from a right click
Automatically add remote repositories for identified dependencies which 
needs it.

3/Move the JAX-RS, JSF, JPA Maven configurators out of JBT and into 
m2e-wtp. It makes sense as nothing here depends on any JBoss 
technologies. Other m2e-wtp adopters requested it and Max agreed to it. 
This would happen for the Juno SR2 release.

4/Ideally, I'd spend more time on m2e itself to fix a number of 
usability issues, like being able for a user to manually set the 
error/warning levels, properly handle workspace dependencies with 
classifiers.  Same thing goes for m2e-wtp : work on adding support for 
stuff like ejb-client

5/ Fix bugs and polish what we already have. Maybe use a profiler to see 
what we do wrong in our code.

These are the thing I personally think should be dealt with in priority 
(even if other enhancement requests exist in JIRA), now if you'd really 
like to see something else fixed/added in JBT 4/JBDS 6, please speak up.

Regards,

Fred Bricon