Migrating to maven from an unusual svn directory structure?

Question

Contrary to a \'normal\' svn directory structure I\'m using the following structure:

trunk/
  project1/
  project2/
  project3/
  ...
branches/
  project1-branch/         


        

Answer 1

If you want to use Maven only for the dependency management and you think your project structure is already good enough/works well for you, here's a helpful hint: Forget Maven.

Maven is a lot more than just a dependency management tool, it calls itself "software project management and comprehension tool" which obviously covers dependencies but also a lot of other bases too. Since you only want to have dependency management, you should at least take a look at a tool such as Ant Ivy which exists solely for the purpose of managing dependencies.

The real benefit of Ivy is that you can tackle the dependency management a lot better and more fine grained than with Maven while keeping your existing project structures, build scripts and just about anything you've already built on top of it. Ivy doesn't reinforce any project structure or configuration patterns, it allows you to define what you want to get from the dependency management tool and then add it to your project instead of forcing your project to become structurally something stated by some people in ivory tower.

To further help you decide, here's comparisons between each other by both parties:

• Ivy/Maven2 comparison by Ivy developers
• Maven/Ivy (plus others) comparison by Maven developers - remember to read the comments too