What do you use for a complex build process? [closed]

Answer 1

I use Rake everywhere I can. Where you need to build java code you might use it with jruby, or look at something like: buildr

Answer 2

I have to add to these one solution that I find I can't live without ... its called Hudson. It only takes a few seconds to setup and you can usually get away with most of whatever your existing ANT files are already doing.

Additionally, Hudson provides a great way to "cron" builds, execute test cases, and generate "artifacts" (e.g. build products) in a way that anyone can download.

It is hard to capture all that it can do for you ... so just try it out ... you will no be disappointed.

Answer 3

Stick with Ant since you're building Java. I've mixed Ant/SCons for some JNI work, but in general I'd stay with Ant especially since you've got an existing build setup in Ant. Porting to Maven will be like shoving a square peg through a wall with no holes.

Embrace your custom Java logic for any and consider writing proper Ant tasks instead of executing external Java code. I solved some very complex parts of our build process by simply extending Ant to do exactly what I needed, ex. managing icon resources for a large gui project or injected subversion information directly info jar manifests (thank you SVNKit)

Answer 4

I use Maven, not just for build, I also use their release/dist plugin.

In a pair of commands I can have code that was in a source control to build, package and release.

The release plugin handles updating the version numbers, dist handles how to put everything together and zip it.

Ant looks hard when compared to Maven. Sure there is a learning curve with Maven, but reading a pom.xml is far easier than reading a build.xml.

Maven needs to be far less verbose.

Answer 5

I use mainly Ant, but Maven is also a good tool. With ant you can do anything you want.

At our company, we created a general purpose ant builder that does a lot of things: Build, Compess images, minify, generate documentation, pack files.. It is open source and we are open to improvements. You can get it here:

https://github.com/edertone/TurboBuilder

Answer 6

I like using Rake as you can fall back on the power of the whole Ruby language and it's framework library when needed.