Sonatype forging ahead with Maven 2

Sonatype is moving forward with commercial products augmenting the open-source Apache Maven build manager for Java, readying a repository manager and a product linking Maven to the Eclipse IDE.

Headed by CEO Mark de Visser, former chief marketing officer at PHP tools maker Zend Technologies, Sonatype is set to release its Nexus repository manager in December and m2eclipse, to integrate Maven into Eclipse, in the first quarter of 2009. Sonatype was founded by the team that built Maven.

“In the short nutshell, the activity of Sonatype is to support an open-source project called Maven and Maven helps people build and release software,” de Visser said.

Both Nexus and m2Eclipse already have been available as open-source products. The commercial version of Nexus adds security capabilities. The commercial m2eclipse offering integrates with Nexus and offers “project materialization” for finding source code and tests for software development projects. Thousands of companies already use the open-source versions of these products, de Visser said.

Nexus helps manage binary components; with the commercial release, called Nexus Professional, users gain control over who can add and remove components in the repository. It also features a plugin manager to enable developers in multiple locations to synchronize the repository. Extensions to Nexus will be introduced next year.

“Nexus manages the Maven repository,” said de Visser.

M2eclipse, meanwhile, enables Maven searches from the Eclipse environment. “What it does is it allows Eclipse developers to work very easily with Maven,” de Visser said. The commercial version will be called m2eclipse Professional.

An early user of m2eclipse concurred. “It makes developing with Maven a lot more productive,” said Bruce Snyder, software engineer at SpringSource. “It integrates Maven into Eclipse and allows me to remain inside of Eclipse when I’m working on [Apache projects like] ActiveMQ or Camel.”

A founder and CTO of Sonatype, Jason van Zyl, previously has said combining Maven with Eclipse offers a solution approaching the usability of Microsoft’s Visual Studio platform. Van Zyl was a developer of Maven.

Nexus Professional subscriptions will cost US$3,000 per year. Pricing has not yet set for the m2eclipse Professional.