Split configuration of pom location, when adding new M2 projects, into two parts; optionally specify a workspace into which a (modular-)project should be checked-out.

Split configuration of the pom.xml location, when adding new M2 projects. Currently, projects are checked-out from SCM at the directory containing the pom.xml, which is not always what one wants.

Also, optionally specify a workspace into which a (modular-)project should be checked-out. Currently, projects are checked-out from SCM into a directory named by that particular build number.

The following pathology exists when trying to implement CI with flat-modular projects:

modproj/
    |-- trunk/ (part of subversion versioning tree)
        |-- module-1/
            |-- pom.xml
        |-- module-2/
            |-- pom.xml
        |-- module-3/
            |-- pom.xml
        |-- reactor/
            |-- pom.xml (this is the parent pom i.e. it contains the list of modules; see next)

 
<modules>
    <module>../module-1</module>
    <module>../module-2</module>
    <module>../module-3</module>
</modules>

What I propose is to add an additional configuration step (hence improvement, not new feature) to the new M2 project page,:

• Split the POM Url field into two:
  • The first field specifies the project root i.e. not the project's pom.xml. For the scenario above one would enter scm:svn:http:/svn/modproj/trunk
  • The new second field specifies the location of the project's pom.xml relative to the root of the check-out. For example reactor/pom.xml
    • A sensible default would be just pom.xml i.e. making the assumption that the file is in the root of the check-out.

With this approach, Continuum has atleast the same information as the current approach (for backwards compatibility) but also has the intention of the developer/administrator w.r.t. the layout of the project.

Optionally, a third field can be added that lets you specify a workspace for your project's individual builds and that Continuum checks out into. For the scenario above, if this workspace was modproj (...hint hint), then Continuum would check-out into 1/modproj/ all the modules including reactor.

This has better fidelity to what a developer does on their workstation, especially us Eclipse users.