CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaandroidpythonmaven-2maven
Salim Fadhley
Salim Fadhley

Reputation: 23018

I just want to get started on development and spend less time faffing around with dependancies... is there a non MVN solution?

I'm a relativly newcomer to Java and Android, so far it's been a truly enlightening experience. The biggest nuisance is simply setting up my projects in the first place.

I've noticed that I seem to be spending a lot of time downloading source-code of dependancy projects, manually building jars and then manually adding them to my eclipse project. I'm spending a lot of time sorting out my dependancies and I've not yet written a single line of code!!!

When I write programs in Python which have complex dependancies I use setuptools: There's a really easy way to specify dependancies in the setup.py build file, and a correspondingly simple way to add those egg dependancies to my eclipse configuration. Despite Python's flaws it's remarkably easy to get up & running with a new project. Projects with large dependancy trees are never a problem.

I wander if there's something I can do as a Java developer that's this easy. Even better I'd like something which takes a very casual approach to adding project dependancies - for example if somebody says "Hey... try out this neat library for doing blahblah..." - I want to be able to quickly add it to my project and run with it without having to think to hard about where the component comes from or how to compile up that dependancy.

What I want to do is start up a new project and simply select a bunch of dependancies. Preferably this should be via some kind of GUI tool. I'd like this to be as pain-free as possible: For example if I add a dependany to the project I'd like all that dependancy's dependancies to be automatically added to the project and my eclipse configuration.

I've no particular dislike of Maven - I just dont want to have to spend ages learning how to use it. I need to use the time to get to developing. If there was a way to make maven configuration a lot easier (e.g. no direct editing of XML files) then I'd probably go with that.

FYI, I'm running the latest version of Eclipse on both Ubuntu Linux & Win32. I'm open to almost any solution which will take the pain out of setting up my Java developer envirobnment. I'm interested in solutions which will allow me to create android applications, however I'm also interested in more generic Java technologies but please be sure to note if the technology is not applicable to Android.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 147

Answers (2)

Prasanna Talakanti
Prasanna Talakanti

Reputation: 2394

I think using maven2 from command line does have a learning curve, But if you use maven2 eclipse plugin http://eclipse.org/m2e/, It is much more easier as it provides a nice gui to add and remove plugins/dependency jars and has context help to run build.

Upvotes: 1

Paul Cager
Paul Cager

Reputation: 1930

You could have a look at Gradle, which requires a much less configuration than Maven. A good quick-start for Java developers is http://www.gradle.org/tutorial_java_projects.html.

Upvotes: 2

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