Subject: Is anyone hacking on PL/Java using Eclipse ?

From: Chapman Flack <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 May 2020 22:09:30 -0400

In particular, is anyone using Eclipse and relying on the
org.eclipse.m2e:lifecycle-mapping configuration in the pljava-so POM?

https://github.com/tada/pljava/blob/714e81c/pljava-so/pom.xml#L155

I can see that Thomas added it in 2013 because Eclipse had been complaining
it didn't know what to do with the nar-maven-plugin goals (or, presumably,
with the maven-antrun-plugin or properties-maven-plugin goals either).

I wonder if that stuff is still serving a purpose for anyone.

I also see that the M2Eclipse folks back in version 1.1 added a way
for plugin authors to supply that metadata with the plugin itself, by
including a META-INF/m2e/lifecycle-mapping-metadata.xml file [1].

nar-maven-plugin already includes such a file in the version we are
currently using, and properties-maven-plugin adds one in 1.0.0. Only
maven-antrun-plugin still seems to lack it.

I also see that m2e 1.7 introduced a much less obtrusive way to supply
the information in the POM if the plugin doesn't: with a <?m2e? ...?>
processing instruction [2].

So it seems to me that most of that large hunk of XML in the POM could
be dispensed with: for nar-maven-plugin (which is most of the hunk), and
for properties-maven-plugin if the version is bumped to 1.0.0. Something
might still be needed for maven-antrun-plugin but the processing instruction
might be enough.

But I am not using Eclipse, so I won't immediately know if that's going
to mess up someone else's day.

Regards,
-Chap

[1]
https://www.eclipse.org/m2e/documentation/m2e-making-maven-plugins-compat.html

[2]
https://www.eclipse.org/m2e/documentation/release-notes-17.html#new-syntax-for-specifying-lifecycle-mapping-metadata

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From: Chapman Flack <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 22:19:57 -0400

> to mess up someone else's day.

To make those proposed changes concrete and testable, there is now a branch
chore/master/m2e on github that contains them.

Regards,
-Chap