Profile activation/deactivation

[Paul Gier]

I agree, I think the best option for 2.0.x is to keep the current profile
behaviour, with the working profile deactivation.
I like the idea of being able to use "+myProfile" to add a profile without
deactivating the deafault profiles.  But for 2.0.x I think we should just leave
the current behaviour because:

1. The change would require some changes to the ProfileManager interface and
more changes to the DefaultProfileManager should probably wait until 2.1.

2. I see the "+" option as low priority because there is an easy workaround of
just specifying all the profiles that you want active.

For 2.1 maybe we can add an optional groupId to the profile config like you
suggested.


As far as reducing the overall need for profiles maybe being able to more easily
control the build lifecycle would help.  For example, if there was an easy way
to tell the build to skip a certain phase or skip certain plugins or executions,
that might cover some profile use cases.


Brian E. Fox wrote:

> I think we should maintain the current functionality of a default deactivating when another profile in the pom is activated until there is a syntax to perform the same. I have often in the past done things like: (pseudo pom code)
>
> <profile>
>   <id>all</id>
>   <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
>   <modules>
>    <module>a</module>
>    <module>b</module>
>    <module>c</module>
> ...
>
> <profile>
>   <id>a</id>
>   <modules>
>    <module>a</module>
>
> Etc and the activation would be mvn xxx -Pa  and the expectation is you only build a...retraining everyone to say -Pa,!all is a bit much.
>
> To accomplish this correctly, you would need to add a profile group id and if nothing is there, then the explicitly share the same group, thus preserving backwards compat while giving a bit more flexibility.
>
> I do share Jesse's sentiment about maybe we are missing something else. If there's anything in the pom that reduces clarity, it is definitely profiles.
>
> --Brian
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jesse.mcconnell@... [mailto:jesse.mcconnell@...] On Behalf Of Jesse McConnell
> Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 11:37 AM
> To: Maven Developers List; rgoers@...
> Subject: Re: Profile activation/deactivation
>
> No one can dispute the nice things that profiles let us accomplish in
> terms of toggling on functionalities...
>
> But I wonder much this will impact build reproducibility....especially
> given the existence of profiles in the settings.xml file.  It is
> already a source of minor pain where people need to pass around
> fragments of profiles to get their builds (or releases) working.  I
> wonder how much making it easier to toggle on and off profiles will
> impact the future of these sorts of practices.
>
> I already have to edit my settings.xml file and comment in and out a
> certain profile if I want to deploy something from one place or
> another.  I could override on the cli but thats a big pita as well.
> John and I talked ages ago about how profiles were basically a hack
> and black magic in what they allowed people to do with any given
> build.  Seeing all of these +/-/D:/E:/! goop floating around seems to
> be increasing the black magic.  I am torn though, profiles have helped
> me immeasurably in the past...even if they made me feel a touch dirty
> in the process.
>
> Are we missing a chance to codify some other sort of functionality
> that keeps build reproducibility at the forefront?  And by build
> reproducibility I mean out of the box, not after cut and pasting magic
> chunks of stuff around behind the scenes.
>
> anywho, figured I would throw that out.
> jesse
>
> On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 10:16 AM, Ralph Goers
> <Ralph.Goers@...> wrote:
>> +1.  My first reaction though was the thought, what should -P-profile do? Is
>> it confusing not to have it if + is supported? Would it be the same as
>> -P!profile?
>>
>>
>>  Bernhard David wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> would it be possible to have "-Pprofile" work as usual (activate
>>> profile, deactivate defaults) but "-P+profile" add profile to the
>>> existing ones, without deactivating defaults? Or if "+" is taken we
>>> could use some other character.
>>>
>>> In any case it would be really useful to add profiles like this, for
>>> instance to support "mvn install -P+optionalTests" without having to
>>> figure out what other profiles you need manually.
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> David Bernhard
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
>
>

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[Paul Gier]

I added a proposal for some profile activation/deactivation improvements here:
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVENUSER/Improvements+to+Profile+Activation+Deactivation

Please take a look and add comments if you are interested.

Thanks!

Paul Gier wrote:

>
> I would like to bring up a couple of issues related to profile
> activation and deactivation.  While working on MNG-3545 I noticed some
> cases where the current behaviour might be improved.
>
>
> 1. What is the correct behaviour when there is more than one
> activeByDefault profile and I manually activate one of them?  Currently,
> if I have two activeByDefault profiles, profile1 and profile2, and I run
> "mvn -P+profile1" then profile1 stays active and profile2 is
> deactivated.  This also bring up the following more general question.
>
>
> 2. Should default profiles be automatically deactivated if another
> profile is activated?  I don't think the current behaviour should be
> changed in 2.0.x, but for 2.1 I think it's worth considering leaving
> default profiles active unless explicitly disabled.
>
> If you think of profiles as being mutually exclusive, then it makes
> sense to activate one and have the default profile be deactivated.  But
> IMO that seems to be a less common use case vs. using profiles to
> activate particular parts of a build and not normally interfering with
> each other.  In this case it seems more intuitive that an
> activeByDefault profile is always active unless deactivated. In
> addition, now that profiles can be deactivated as needed from the
> command line, there doesn't seem to be as much of a need to have
> activeByDefault profiles automatically turn off.
>
>
> 3. There was a suggestion to allow the use of "!" to disable a profile.  
> So the command line would look like: mvn -P!myProfile
>
> This seems more intuitive than the current syntax using a dash, and I
> created MNG-3571 for it.  But I'm hesitant to add it since we can
> already use "-" for this, and it looks like "mvn -P D:myProfile" was
> added as another option for disabling a profile in 2.1.
>

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