U8String VS Polyglot for Maven

Writing performance-sensitive code in C and calling it via interop used to be the way to go during .NET Framework days but since then has become a performance trap.

Especially for small methods, calling them through interop is a deoptimization because they cannot be inlined, and involve GC frame transition (which you can suppress) as well as an indirect jump and maybe interop stub unless you are statically linking the dependency into your AOT deployment. In case the arguments are not blittable to C - marshalling too.

It is also complicates the publishing process because you have to build both .NET and C parts and then package them together, considering the matrix of [win, linux, macos] x [x64, arm64], it turns into quite an unpleasant experience.

Instead, the recommended approach is just continuing to write C# code, except with pointer and/or ref based code. This is what CoreLib itself does for the most performance-sensitive bits[0]. Naturally, it intentionally looks ugly like in Rust, but you can easily fix it with a few extension methods[1].

[0]: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/src/libraries/Sy...

[1]: https://github.com/U8String/U8String/blob/main/Sources/Share...

And you don't even need to use XML with Polyglot Maven

https://github.com/takari/polyglot-maven

If you prefer the shorter alternative, you might want to use the Polyglot XML extension https://github.com/takari/polyglot-maven/tree/master/polyglot-xml

Here you go: https://github.com/takari/polyglot-maven

Fun fact, POM files can be in formats other than XML (although I have no idea if IJ would tolerate such shenanigans): https://github.com/takari/polyglot-maven/blob/polyglot-0.4.8/polyglot-yaml/src/test/resources/snakeyaml/pom.yaml

There is a certain argument to be made for user ergonomy. Many developers are drawn to Gradle and friends, or to work with polyglot Maven, because they support a more concise syntax. This is not necessarily a contradiction with Maven's Goals!

I wished they‘d finally embrace polyglot maven https://github.com/takari/polyglot-maven. pom.yaml rule the world.

It seems merely adding a file to the .mvn directory will do as you wish: https://github.com/takari/polyglot-maven#usage

I have avoided that road because it's one more thing that is a snowflake in the very area where I don't want to blazing trails. But I have personally tried their approach before and can confirm it does work as advertised. I can't recall if IJ lost its mind over pulling a stunt like that, but arguably if it did, then filing a YouTrack is an appropriate next step