I'll tell you that I'm still a fan of well organized ant scripts.
Yes, ant can get messy. (like Make!) Yes, ant has no dependency management. (If you really care to move in that direction, look at Ivy.) Yes, Ant is XML based, and XML is ugly. BUT It's the best java tool out there for complex projects. I wholeheartedly endorse Maven 2 for simple projects and new projects with well-defined dependencies. However, when I was with STC, we moved from a crufty ant-based system to a new shiny Maven system while Maven was still in Beta. There were four of us who eventually had to put our hand into it, including one of the members ending up with commit privileges to the project. (Now, mind you, I wasn't expecting the world for documentation at the time, and it has gotten somewhat better, but there are still nagging bugs and idiosyncrasies with transitive dependencies and plugin development. That's not even talking about the internal and external repository problems!) We still had to revert to ant scripts called by Maven in some cases. It still doesn't have an elegant way to call build scripts from what I can tell. (we were calling an ant script.) So, my suggestion is to eliminate the IDE dependency with ant and spend a little time looking at the tool. You can make nice, modular ant scripts, and they have the building blocks to do most anything you need. Maven is fine for new projects. It's hell for complex old projects. On 12/23/06, Robert Zeigler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Without starting a flame-war... ;) I'm about to embark on updating a very brittle build process. It's currently based on a combination of relying on the IDE + a bit of ant In all honesty, I know make better than I know any other build tool, but I'd rather not do this build in make. So, I'm looking for some input into what build tool(s) you use, and why? Thanks! Robert --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
