One of the slams that Maven receives is related to the verbosity necessary in order to use the Archetype plugin to create new projects. In order to create a new simple java project using the older version of the Maven Archetype plugin, you had to do something similar to the following:
mvn archetype:create "-DgroupId=com.sagetech.example" "-DartifactId=dummyProject"
The above would create a simple project with the jar packaging type. If you wanted to do something a little more complex, like create a project of a different packaging type, (ejb, ear, web module), you had to specify even more properties to the archetype plugin, something similar to...
mvn archetype:create "-DgroupId=com.sagetech.example" "-DartifactId=dummyProjectWeb"
"-DarchetypeArtifactId="
Although the above approaches work without any issues, it still seemed to be a cold way for a developer to get started with an application. And it appears that I am not the only one who thought so.
With the recent release of the Archetype plugin, you don't have to specify any properties at all. Simply type the command:
mvn archetype:generate
...and during the course of the execution of the plugin, it will prompt you for the following information:
1.) Choose the archetype
2.) Choose the groupId
3.) Define the artifactId
4.) Define the version
5.) Define the package
A friend of mine has always given me a hard time about how verbose you have to be in order to create a java application using the Maven Archetype Plugin. I cannot wait until he reads this post...Dave Brondsema, this one is for you.... :)
