Ruby

Ruby has quickly grown from an academic curiosity to a script-writer's dream for many reasons. But the following are some of the more obvious ones:

• Simple object oriented design and easy to understand syntax. A common shortcoming of scripting languages are their lack of maintainability. Have you ever dug up a year-old Perl script you were certain you wrote? It may have been written by someone else. With Ruby, it is easy to decode and extend that hack.
• Powerful Perl-like expressiveness (yet understandable). It combines the power of Perl with the clean syntax of Python or Smalltalk. The bane of powerful scripting languages has long been their esoteric commands. Despite Rubys relatively low lines per non-trivial action, it is easy on the eyes.
• Out-of-the-box utility. Much like PHP, Ruby just kind of works. RubyGems are a little extra bonus in adding functionality from a common repository. Sound familiar? Yeah, that's right, just like Maven. You're so smart.

But I don't need to sell you on Ruby. Chances are you know and love it; that's why you are here.

Maven

Maven has been around for at least a couple years, like Ruby (and potatoes), it has been flourishing underground. But there have been a couple issues stopping Maven from reaching its full potential:

• Jelly Jelly is an XML-based scripting language that is also an abomination of nature. If you have been fortunate enough to have never had to do seemingly simple operations with 50 lines of Jelly script, then take my word for it: it likely responsible for any lackluster response toward Maven 1.

In my opinion, that is all. Maven 2 on the other hand, is simple, componentized, extensible. All plugins are written in Java. Although a huge step up from Jelly, Java is ill-suited for operations generally required in build systems. Namely: file manipulations, parsing, document generation. It is a wonderful core, but no one wants to write, compile, test and package a Maven Java class (dubbed a Mojo) containing akwards Java parsing code to do something simple like extracting file annotations. Enter Ruby Mojo support.

Ruby Mojo Support

Unfortunately, Maven does not come with every task you could ever want done already available from ibiblio. Fortunately, the developers have added hooks into the very core of Maven 2, making extension of the build-lifecycle relatively painless. My goal is to make it even more painless by adding support for a language that is more suited for the majority of tasks one will encounter when extending their build system with whatever hacks the developer likes. Ruby is such a language. You can download and install the code or use it correctly include the projects into your plugin.

It is still very much in alpha phase. So much so, that the todo list may seem shocking, but its not that bad:

• Expand paremeter support to encompass lists, integers, booleans, and whatever else
• Clean up the rubyscript-maven-plugin to be of a more general purpose Ruby support