How to setup a Java maven project for multiple developers to use easily

Question

What do people think is the best way of setting up a Java, maven-2 web project so a new developer can come on board easily?

Do you checkin you project settings, .classpath, .project .settings folder etc into source control and use variables?

Or

Is it better to just checkin code and use the maven eclipse plugin to generate project settings?

Keep in mind these are multi module projects, with different facets so the project meta data could be quite complex

Answer 1

Never ever ever check in any .* file in a maven project. It will mess things up whenever any developer turns on or off any eclipse builder or nature.

If you need to enforce common configuration, use the additionalConfig flag of the Maven Eclipse Plugin

Answer 2

This is controversial, and normally depend on a person's own judgment.

Personally I like to check in all IDE configuration files, especially if all team members are using the same IDE. This way you can use IDE's UI to manage project configuration, such as formatting and other code editing settings without need to manually tweak Maven's plugin configuration, which is too easy to break.