Build Tools
Posted on November 25, 2018
by Ernesto Garbarino
Tools to build Java artifacts (e.g. JAR files), manage dependencies and packages.
Ant: Apache Ant was one of the first frameworks to automate the compilation and building of Java libraries. It is known for its imperative, task-oriented, nature as well as its (much despised) XML-based configuration.
Gradle: Gradle is supposed to improve over Maven shortcomings; in particular, being able to override conventions in a more user-friendly manner and supporting more languages other than just Java.
Maven: Apache Maven is the de facto Java build tool. It is known for its convention-over-configuration philosophy and declarative approach which results in less boilerplate compared to Ant.