Maven over Ant + Ivy: A Team Perspective by Les Hazlewood

January 15, 2010 By Jason van Zyl

2 minute read time

[Les Hazlewood][les] has an objective summary of why he eventually came around to deciding that Maven is a better overall solution then Ant + Ivy. This is an evolution in thought process that we, [Sonatype][sonatype], often see in enterprises and Les has two blog entries that illustrate this evolution perfectly.

[Maven 2 vs Ant+Ivy: Our selection process][1]: This entry gives Les' original perspective on Maven and the process by which he originally decided to choose Ant + Ivy.

[Maven 2 vs Ant+Ivy: Revisited][2]: This entry gives Les' new perspective and why his enterprise team, and the Apache Shiro project, have chosen Maven.

> I now firmly believe that Maven 2 is a better build and project management tool than Ant+Ivy. I was wrong.

> Yep, I said it. I’m man enough to admit when I’ve made mistakes and that I’ve learned from my experiences. And this is coming from the guy that wrote a (still popular) OnJava article for Ant in the enterprise.

> Overall, life with Maven is good. I’m glad that I was able to swallow my pride, really give it a chance, and in turn reap the benefits. I haven’t used Ant in over a year since switching, nor have I ever felt the need to go back.

We hope this perspective helps potential enterprises save time when looking for a build and release infrastructure.

[1]: http://www.leshazlewood.com/?p=44
[2]: http://www.leshazlewood.com/?p=55
[les]: http://www.leshazlewood.com
[sonatype]: http://www.sonatype.com

Tags: Nexus Repo Reel, Sonatype Says, Everything Open Source, ivy, Community, ant, Maven

Written by Jason van Zyl

Jason is a co-founder and the former CTO of Sonatype.