Isn’t it nice when once in a blue moon somebody comes up with an innovation which makes your life just that little bit simpler – one of those little things which you soon take for granted, but you’d miss immediately if it was not longer there. In this case, it’s the Maven 2 plugin which automatically updates your source files with the appropriate license details
Until now this was an annoyingly manual task which was just not quite annoying or time consuming enough to merit spending time automating. It was one of those borderline annoyances which you plan to do something about, every time it bites you. However, in this case it is always the last action before cutting a release, when you’ve had a long hard day, the caffeine has worn off (and it’s a bit late for another dose, you’d never get to sleep) – you’re running on an empty tank and you’d really like to get out of the door. Over time these small tasks stack up and sap your energy.
That’s why this plugin is such a life saver. It does just what it says on the tin, took about 5 minutes to set up and get going – saving time the very first time I used it, even taking into account the minimal setup and configuration.
Every time I find a new plugin like this I’m reminded of some of the great things about maven – particularly the convention over configuration, which facilitates such easy sharing and reuse, and allows most features to ‘just work’. For sure, there is a learning curve associated with maven – but once you’re up to speed the benefit really shows.
