What I find odd about this project is that it uses maven to build the client (or at least a maven plugin that in turn executes grunt/gulp/whatever). Does anyone have experience with that? Is it any good?
Had some experience with it in BigCorp™. I don't love it, but it works. It's just a plugin that will install node (and npm), run `npm instal` and then run the specified gulp task.
The good part is that it's not that bad to fit within the company infrastructure, particularly if it's a BigCorp kind of thing. It's interesting because it allows you to play well with CI processes and quality rules - I'm thinking about tests here. With this kind of setup, you can make the front-end build fail if e.g. code coverage drops below a given threshold, using the same setup you use for other components.
The boring part is that it's yet another place to put config info. A particularly ugly one which reeks of over-engineering IMHO. Also it's XML; XML isn't quite the song of the front-end people, at least config-wise. :)
Maven was added for
1. Java developers to be able to build the project, it is there so they can build the client.
2. For infrastructures that don't support proper front end build tools.
Saying that however to just build the client you can run "gulp" or "gulp zip" to create a build artefact.
