Comments on: The State of Java Build Systems

By: Anil

Anil — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:04:00 +0000

I use a project template with a build file that downloads the maven-ant integration from the web. Most of the dependencies can be resolved using maven repos. Some libraries such as amazon webservice, i download them from my web server at the time of the build.
It works most of the time as dependencies among the project changes little, after that its just cut paste.

By: ittay

ittay — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:20:04 +0000

@Daniel: where do things get hairy? i’ve been writing a fairly large build (~90 modules and growing) which replaces an older one, so things are definitely not according to buildr standards and have written some functionality not provided by buildr. all went quite smoothly.

@Hamlet: you can run ant tasks from buildr using AntWrap (and also any Java code you want)

By: panzi

panzi — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:13:51 +0000

Keep in mind with Java you don't have to go through autohell. ;) I think Waf supports Java, too. Dunno how good Java support is, though.

By: Blog bookmarks 08/06/2008 « My Diigo bookmarks

Blog bookmarks 08/06/2008 « My Diigo bookmarks — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:28:12 +0000

[...] The State of Java Build Systems « Unmaintainable [...]

By: Jing Xue

Jing Xue — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:10:11 +0000

Nice post. Ant+Ivy is still my build tool of choice. With Ant 1.7 you can come up with really nicely modularized scripts that are quite generic and usable. And Ivy’s dependency management is much more powerful than maven2.

The biggest problem I have with maven2 is that it’s almost always a pain to deviate from the standard settings. For instance, I consider keeping resource files and source files under two separate base folders very unnatural and counter-productive – why should User.hbm.xml not be kept together with User.java?

Of course Ant’s biggest problem started from day 1 – it was a bad idea to pick xml for the language. I’ve looked at a few other build tools – gant, gradle, etc. Some of them are very promising because of the powerful DSL they base on. But none of them have matured to the point where I’m comfortable with a complete migration.

Also I’d agree with Slava. Build scripts should be treated first-class on a project. I’ve seen my share of crappy ant scripts. And all of them were produced by junior developers assigned to the task as an afterthought.

By: Slava Imeshev

Slava Imeshev — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:55:14 +0000

My general recommendation is to treat build scripts as important as the project they build. Let only the most a limited group of the experienced members of the team to work on them and you will be fine.

Regards,

Slava Imeshev

By: mafr

mafr — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:44:39 +0000

@Geoffrey: See Brett Porter's blog.

By: Geoffrey Wiseman

Geoffrey Wiseman — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:39:19 +0000

Haven’t seen much about Maven 2.1 having a simpler syntax; ref?

By: Vishwajeet Singh

Vishwajeet Singh — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:22:44 +0000

Maven is powerful but still it sucks big time; I was trying to build plugin for Atlassian’s product JIRA for my organization and it was a nightmare using maven.
But once setup it does alot of things for you.

By: Dan Howard

Dan Howard — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:39:01 +0000

Hamlet is right. Gant leverages all the ant plugins (tons) and has a simpler syntax.