I find that I often have to set up workspace on different machines. Mine, staging, continuous build, production and so on. Having to always remember to get the dependencies from some websites is a pain. Not to mention that when the version changes everyone has to go grab a new one. I find it much simpler if you simply check the dependencies in. Than there is nothing to worry about. All of the machines will simply update themselves.

Why do you like to include dependencies in subversion? I have been dithering back on forth over whether I should do this for personal projects. Currently I do not include them, but include instructions to install the dependencies prominently in the readme, which is visible bother before and after download.

I guess for the moment I only expect my project to be tried out by other developers, who will not be too put off by installing dependencies like this.

For users, I intend to create a stand-alone installer, which would include all dependencies. I suppose I ought to prioritise creating this, or else I am excluding some early adopters who might try my project out if they didn’t have to mess about instralling deps.

Does this match your thinking on this?

ps
there is a new update site for the eclipse/maven plugin that was on codehaus.

http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/update

I’m a recent convert to maven too, especially with the great integration with eclipse it has

Get integrated with SVN, Maven and generate automated mails on every build/release.

Use Maven instead of Ant
http://maven.apache.org/

Find the better way to integrate the maven with eclipse -> http://m2eclipse.codehaus.org/

Use TestNG for unit testing -> http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-04-2005/jw-0404-testng.html

And do the ST/IT with Spring -> http://www.infoq.com/articles/testing-in-spring

Consider Toplink instead of Hibernate-> http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/toplink/index.html