The way I do this is to use my IDE's dependency analysis to have my
IDE do a "Make" (which rebuilds all the downstream changes)... then
before I commit I will do a "mvn clean verify" to make sure that my
changes are good
Yes my IDE does the analysis too.
The problem is in my colleague.
He is unix geek and orthodox and use Emacs as java IDE. At the start of
the project we had a long discussion what use as build tool.
He insisted on Ant because he knew exactly how it works and can easily
adjust build process.
I proposed to use Maven as it has perfect support of multi-module
projects (at least I thought so at that time).
I frustrated a lot because in my opinion recompilation of dependent
modules when dependency was changed is a main goal of any matured build
tool.
And I was convinced that Maven reactor mechanism does it perfectly.
Actually I can't believe in absence of such functionality in Maven.
