Somehow, when I wasn't looking, XDoclet 2 was released. Apparently it was released some time ago, but it didn't cross my eyes until today.
But, I'm not so sure that I care.
I have been a big fan of XDoclet...so much so that I wrote a book about it. But I find myself using XDoclet less and less lately and am wondering why I should bother with XDoclet 2.
First off, I am no longer troubling myself with EJB 2.x, the primary motivator for XDoclet. If and when I choose to use EJB 3, I'll be using annotations, so XDoclet doesn't apply.
I've also been known to use XDoclet to generate TLD files, web.xml files, and struts-action.xml files. I rarely write my own JSP tags or standalone servlets, and I've not done anything in Struts in well over a year.
At the moment, the only thing I'm still using XDoclet for is to generate Hibernate mapping files. I'm starting to look into using Hibernate 3 annotations, but it'll be awhile before I'm able to migrate all of my production apps to Java 5. So, I still have a "legacy" use of XDoclet and probably will for quite some time.
I suppose that I could switch to XDoclet 2 to generate those mapping files. But what would it buy me? XDoclet 1 still does a great job of generating Hibernate mapping files. What will XDoclet 2 give me that XDoclet 1 doesn't already do? Sure, XDoclet 2 is much better designed than XDoclet 1. But that's "under the covers" stuff. As a user of XDoclet, what's my motivation to switch to XDoclet 2?
I'm not dismissing XDoclet as being useless. Just as I have a legacy need for XDoclet for generating Hibernate mapping files, you may have your own reasons to continue using XDoclet. My question centers around XDoclet 2.
I'm sincerely asking: Can anyone tell me why I should go to the trouble of switching to XDoclet 2?
