What are some good java make utilities?

Question

I\'m looking for a make utility for building large java programs. I\'m aware of ANT already, but want to see what else is available.

Ideally, it should be able to handle

Answer 1

ant has been the leader for years. But its build.xml being, well, xml-based, it is very verbose. Dependency management can be achieved by coupling it with ivy.

maven strives to provide out of the box what the ant+ivy tandem provides, it is nice while it works. If it stops doing that and you have to find out where it messes up with dependency management, it may very likely be the worst hell you can imagine. Also it's pom.xml... is written in xml.

sbt is the royal scala build tool, uses ivy for dependency management, and the build files are writen in a scala DSL. Quite mature, but the scala dialect may not be to your liking.

buildr build files are specified in ruby. Compatible with maven repositories and brings it's own dependency management. Ant integration is there, too.

gradle uses groovy for its build files. Beside maven or ivy support it has it's own dependency manager now after having used ivy in the past and not being satisfied. Seamless ant integration. Has the easiest syntax by far.

ant, ivy, maven, buildr are apache projects.

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TL;DR

Check gradle or buildr.