Do not force the use of the parent pom

I think that mandating the use of the alfresco-sdk-parent in projects who need to create or apply AMPs is a bad idea. That parent pom can remain as a facility if it makes life simpler for some, but it should not be mandatory – and I think not even encouraged.

Here is why!

1. It is definitely not standard - in my 10 years using Maven, I’ve never used a plugin that forced or even edvised the use of a specific parent pom. Ole found an exception with Spring Roo, but this is a very “constrained” framework to build applications. Alfresco is meant to be more open.
2. separation of concerns: behaviours should be in the plugin, and configurations in the pom. By defining plugin executions in the parent pom (such as add-module-properties-to-test-classpath), you break this paradigm.
3. In a multimodule build, I have one module that build an AMP, and 20 others that build JARs, WARs, etc. I don’t want to change the parent pom of the whole project just for that one module
4. If 2 plugin providers impose that, I cannot use them both in the same build! (For instance: how do you create a Spring Roo application that also creates an AMP? There’s only one parent POM)
5. Some companies mandate the use of their corporate parent pom, and you can’t use another one.

So, I think we should move as many things as possible from the parent pom to the alfresco-maven-plugin, and if possible get rid of the parent pom altogether.

[ohej]

I am happy to say that SDK3 does no longer require a parent pom! Closing

[jgoldhammer]

@ohej: I think, we are on a good way with the current state. Do you think we can close the ticket? Or is there anything left?

Thanks Jens