Maven 3.0, a mostly-backwards compatible, but significantly improved and extensible version of Maven is developing very quickly. Jason van Zyl hosted a Maven Meetup at their offices in Mountain View in March of this year. Lots of deep information about Maven 2.0 and 3.0 was shared, and videos of some of the sessions are now starting to be posted to the Vimeo web site. The Maven 3.0 video is especially insightful:
Jason van Zyl on Maven 3 from Sonatype on Vimeo.
Here are the takeaway points, highly distilled to 140 proof, for those without time to watch the video:
- Improved overarching performance (tools, engine, resolution, downloads, builds)
- Better tooling integration
- Tie-ins with OSGi
- Excellence in Eclipse integration
- Possibility of non-XML POMs
- Lifecycle extension points
- High-performance artifact resolution engine
- Documentation-hyperlinked error messages
If you want to get access to the Maven 3.0 code, you can view the list of SVN checkout URLs here (or here for the hardcore Git lovers), or just view the source in your browser here. If you want early access to the binaries, you can download them from Apache.