STS just hangs on Updating Maven Dependencies

[g.lawrence]

I'm just evaluating STS and this bug is still there in 2.7.2 - which is the latest as at the time of this post on Win XP 32 JDK 1.6. As a prospective new user this doesn't engender much confidence, and reading the comments about the bug in m2e mentioned above I'm even more dismayed. I tried reinstalling and this made no difference. The IDE is unusable as is.

I couldn't find 2.8.0.M1. If someone can point me to the download page I'll give it a go, but right now it looks like putting faith in this IDE seems like an awfully risky career move. I hope I can be convinced otherwise!

[Rob Winch]

I'm just evaluating STS and this bug is still there in 2.7.2 - which is the latest as at the time of this post on Win XP 32 JDK 1.6. As a prospective new user this doesn't engender much confidence, and reading the comments about the bug in m2e mentioned above I'm even more dismayed. I tried reinstalling and this made no difference. The IDE is unusable as is.

While STS 2.7.x/2.8.x are built on the latest Eclipse neither took m2e 1.0 (which is where the fix is) because there is a lot of missing m2e project configurators which makes using m2e 1.0 a bit tricky in many circumstances. If you would like to follow along with the progress of integrating m2e 1.0 into STS you can see it in the STS-1919. Personally, I have gone ahead and installed m2e 1.0 in STS 2.8.0.M1 and it works for most cases. When it doesn't work, I use the lifecycleMappingMetadata to get m2e 1.0 to build the old way which can cause the same issues that m2e 0.x had.

I couldn't find 2.8.0.M1. If someone can point me to the download page I'll give it a go, but right now it looks like putting faith in this IDE seems like an awfully risky career move. I hope I can be convinced otherwise!

It is on the same page as the 2.7 downloads, but you need to click the "Other Downloads" link to display it. Again, 2.8.0.M1 does not have m2e 1.0 included yet.

[g.lawrence]

Thanks Rob. I've started the download, though from what you say it may not help. I'll let you know.
I'd be interested to hear from an STS veteran such as yourself about the reliability of the product. Based on this first experience I wouldn't be able to recommend it as a stable development platform. Perhaps it's just a generic problem with Maven, as we currently don't use it, but it seems strange to me to have to rely on the ability to download from various URIs before the IDE will work. It makes me wonder if this sort of problem arises regularly when the IDE's dependencies change. It would be nice (I should say "vital") to be able to download things manually or have some sort of workaround.

[Rob Winch]

Personally I really like Eclipse. Since STS bundles many of the plugins that I have to install, I have long switched over to using STS. Each IDE has its own advantages and disadvantages and which IDE that is best really depends on the individual and what you are doing. If you need a workaround try building from the commandline first. Once you have a decent maven cache built up the issue becomes quite rare (at least that was the case for me).

[g.lawrence]

Thanks again Rob. It's reassuring to hear a vote of confidence in the product. I've used Netbeans and some commercial IDEs and it seems they all have their own idiosyncrasies.
I'm trying 2.8.0.M1 now. The problem appears to still be there but it is being reported differently. The "Updating Maven Dependencies (Waiting)" message no longer has a hyperlink below and the console no longer gives any indication of what is happening. I'll give it an hour or two more to see what happens.
I'm not familiar with either STS, Eclipse or Maven so I'm not sure what I need to build from the command line per your suggestion. I'm just trying to create a Spring Roo Project as described in the Getting Started with Roo eBook - but I'm falling at the first hurdle.

[MiB]

I don't see this problem anymore, not with STS 2.7.x nor with STS 2.8M1. OS X 10.5.8 with jdk 1.5 and Windows 7 with jdk 1.6. I've been using Roo 1.2 nightly builds. It could be that's related. Or that I build maven projects from the command line from time to time.

"Updating dependencies" stalls usually is a problem related to repo servers, in my experience.

I have had stability problems though. I suppose IntelliJ is an alternative for Roo projects, but I'm not tempted yet.