Mandatory Maven Wrapper: Overhead of Version Drift vs. Stability Benefits

[Pankraz76]

This project is currently not using the Maven Wrapper. As a result, it incurs ongoing overhead from supporting and debugging builds across different Maven versions used by developers, CI systems, and other environments.

Relying on arbitrarily installed Maven versions leads to version drift, subtle behavior differences, and non-reproducible builds. This instability creates maintenance overhead in the form of environment-specific failures, harder-to-diagnose issues, and additional coordination effort.

Many major open-source projects—including other Google projects such as Guava—address this by adopting the Maven Wrapper. This follows the convention over configuration principle and enforces a single, known Maven version everywhere.

Using the Maven Wrapper reduces version-related overhead by trading a small, one-time setup cost for long-term gains in reproducibility, predictability, and build stability.

Reference:

• [rewrite] Add UpdateMavenWrapper #5343
• https://github.com/google/guava/blob/master/mvnw