Open source build instructions unclear

I intended to add details to the README regarding the runtime tests and building/testing with NPM/yarn (i.e., via yarn build and yarn test) when I realized I cannot get the Maven build to work anymore, now that pom.xml is no longer in the root directory. Despite my best efforts to repair this (moving POM to pom.xml, adding project.source version to silence “source version must be > 8” errors, etc.) so that mvn -DskipTests and so on execute as expected, I cannot the project to compile successfully.

Any help from someone more experienced with Maven would be greatly appreciated. I will send my README PR as soon as this is working again.

[lauraharker]

I believe we only intend to support building via Bazel instead of Maven now: https://github.com/google/closure-compiler#using-bazel. (@nreid260 would know better than me)

Most of the development on Closure Compiler is done in Google’s internal repo via the internal version of Bazel. Most of the Closure Compiler devs are more familiar with Bazel / its internal version, so switching from Bazel to Maven reduced a lot of friction for us & made the internal -> external sync easier, with the tradeoff that non-Google contributors will probably be more familiar with Maven.

Do the Bazel build instructions work for you?

[nreid260]

I can confirm that we no longer intended to support a Maven build. Bazel is the current build tool. We do however continue to publish Maven compatible artifacts to Sontaype.