Products · Product
Maven
Raised as a usability problem by 71 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 62 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
XML build configuration makes simple tasks overcomplicatedUnreviewed
20102026- Build configuration is a messy XML that people hack around to survive2023-10-18
- Adding custom conditional build steps is hard, requiring plugins and XML configuration2023-04-26
- Maven build configuration is confusing and requires reading XML just to compile a project2018-06-24
Builds are very slow and plugin executions interfere with each otherUnreviewed
20102026- Slow builds, and incremental compilation doesn't work well, especially on CI2025-07-16
- Builds are very slow and plugin executions interfere with each other2023-08-24
- Trying out a new plugin has a painfully slow development cycle2016-12-05
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Developers don't know what to do when Maven fails inexplicably2026-09-15
- Slow builds, and incremental compilation doesn't work well, especially on CI2025-07-16
- Build output is hard to read, burying success under harmless messages2024-12-02
- Defaults and error messages make it hard to know which command to run2024-10-28
- Rebuilds jar unpredictably even when no files changed, can't tell the rules2024-01-05
- Finding and updating dependency versions is a pain due to verbose XML and distant locations2024-01-05
- Shading JARs becomes almost impossible to use2023-12-29
- Build configuration is a messy XML that people hack around to survive2023-10-18
- Builds are very slow and plugin executions interfere with each other2023-08-24
- Projects need many extra plugins and XML boilerplate to avoid unsafe default dependency behavior2023-08-24
- Adding custom conditional build steps is hard, requiring plugins and XML configuration2023-04-26
- New layout is prettier but has too much padding, making it harder to use2022-10-18
- Java apps have poor setup documentation, making them hard to get running2021-04-16
- Days lost trying to get simple build tasks to work correctly2021-04-12
- Maven has many idiosyncrasies that frustrate users, pushing them to manual jar handling2021-02-10
- Many steps; PGP key verification fails randomly due to keyserver replication delay2021-02-04
- Documentation is highly confusing and learning curve is very steep2020-11-10
- Default local cache causes people to forget rebuilds, producing confusing failures and bug reports2020-07-12
- Can't figure out how to find a package on the site2020-07-11
- Build tooling is stupidly complex and clunky for developers to use2020-06-19
- Becomes hard to manage as projects grow large2020-01-31
- Commenter finds Maven's user experience poor, opinionated and hard to work with2019-12-09
- Dependency management is really complex and leads to dependency hell2019-10-10
- Can never use it without looking everything up2019-03-20
- Log output buries the useful information, like compilation errors, under unrelated noise2018-11-21
- Maven is very unintuitive to use2018-09-25
- Maven build configuration is confusing and requires reading XML just to compile a project2018-06-24
- Pom.xml mixes package metadata with build configuration, which is confusing2018-05-29
- Overly verbose XML config and slow recompilation make Maven miserable to work with2018-04-04
- Plugins are poorly documented and build files become hard to maintain2018-04-03
- Each dependency needs four lines of XML, making builds verbose2018-02-10
- Forcing existing Ant workflows into Maven plugins gave a bad experience2018-01-21
- Must manually maintain pinned dependency versions, forcing custom tooling to rewrite them2018-01-03
- Hard to work out the correct pom file dependency setup, and it breaks in strange ways2018-01-03
- Configuring Maven is painful compared with npm2017-12-04
- Hard to understand, forcing reliance on tutorial samples and trial and error2017-06-17
- Maven build takes an hour polling online repositories even with nothing to do2017-05-06
- Hard to switch on several profiles together with one action2017-04-06
- Hard to compile only a sub-tree of the project2017-04-06
- Trying out a new plugin has a painfully slow development cycle2016-12-05
- Build configuration in XML is hard to do simple things with, overcomplicated2016-12-05
- Needs huge amounts of documentation and workarounds on moderately large projects2016-08-17
- Poor docs and invented terminology made it look overly complex at first2016-04-14
- Maven is described as a step backwards and hard to work with2016-02-23
- Too many concepts make the build system hard to understand2016-02-04
- Users must learn Maven's specialized vocabulary and a complex, daunting configuration to use it2015-12-09
- Hard to configure initially, though reliable once a POM is written2015-09-18
- Maven's user experience is much harder to use than npm install2015-09-11
- Maven makes most simple things impossible and dependency management becomes a mess past toy projects2015-09-10
- Writing a Maven plugin is hard because the documentation and support are poor2015-07-26