Apache Ant vs Apache Maven vs Pants
Overview
Detailed Comparison
Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like Make, without Make's wrinkles and with the full portability of pure Java code. | Maven allows a project to build using its project object model (POM) and a set of plugins that are shared by all projects using Maven, providing a uniform build system. Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build saving you immense amounts of time when trying to navigate many projects. | Pants is a build system for Java, Scala and Python. It works particularly well for a source code repository that contains many distinct projects. |
The most complete Java build and deployment tool available.;Platform neutral and can handle platform specific properties such as file separators;Can be used to perform platform specific tasks such as modifying the modified time of a file using 'touch' command;Scripts are written using plain XML. If you are already familiar with XML, you can learn pretty quickly;Automate complicated repetitive tasks;Interface to develop custom tasks;Can be easily invoked from the command line and it can integrate with free and commercial IDEs | Simple project setup that follows best practices - get a new project or module started in seconds;Consistent usage across all projects means no ramp up time for new developers coming onto a project;Superior dependency management including automatic updating, dependency closures (also known as transitive dependencies);Able to easily work with multiple projects at the same time;A large and growing repository of libraries and metadata to use out of the box, and arrangements in place with the largest Open Source projects for real-time availability of their latest releases;Extensible, with the ability to easily write plugins in Java or scripting languages;Instant access to new features with little or no extra configuration;Ant tasks for dependency management and deployment outside of Maven | Builds Java, Scala, and Python.;Adding support for new languages is straightforward.;Supports code generation: thrift, protocol buffers, custom code generators.;Resolves external JVM and Python dependencies.;Runs tests.;Spawns Python and Scala REPLs with appropriate load paths.;Creates deployable packages.;Scales to large repos with many interdependent modules.;Designed for incremental builds.;Support for local and distributed caching.;Especially fast for Scala builds, compared to alternatives.;Builds standalone python executables (PEX files);Has a plugin system to add custom features and override stock behavior.;Runs on Linux and Mac OS X. |
Statistics | ||
GitHub Stars 449 | GitHub Stars 4.8K | GitHub Stars 3.7K |
GitHub Forks 449 | GitHub Forks 2.8K | GitHub Forks 674 |
Stacks 183 | Stacks 2.9K | Stacks 23 |
Followers 151 | Followers 1.7K | Followers 86 |
Votes 7 | Votes 414 | Votes 30 |
Pros & Cons | ||
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What are some alternatives to Apache Ant, Apache Maven, Pants?
Gradle
Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. If you are building, testing, publishing, and deploying software on any platform, Gradle offers a flexible model that can support the entire development lifecycle from compiling and packaging code to publishing web sites.
Bazel
Bazel is a build tool that builds code quickly and reliably. It is used to build the majority of Google's software, and thus it has been designed to handle build problems present in Google's development environment.
JitPack
JitPack is an easy to use package repository for Gradle/Sbt and Maven projects. We build GitHub projects on demand and provides ready-to-use packages.
SBT
It is similar to Java's Maven and Ant. Its main features are: Native support for compiling Scala code and integrating with many Scala test frameworks.
Buck
Buck encourages the creation of small, reusable modules consisting of code and resources, and supports a variety of languages on many platforms.
Please
Please is a cross-language build system with an emphasis on high performance, extensibility and reproduceability. It supports a number of popular languages and can automate nearly any aspect of your build process.
CMake
It is used to control the software compilation process using simple platform and compiler independent configuration files, and generate native makefiles and workspaces that can be used in the compiler environment of the user's choice.
Sonatype Nexus
It is an open source repository that supports many artifact formats, including Docker, Java™ and npm. With the Nexus tool integration, pipelines in your toolchain can publish and retrieve versioned apps and their dependencies
JFrog Artifactory
It integrates with your existing ecosystem supporting end-to-end binary management that overcomes the complexity of working with different software package management systems, and provides consistency to your CI/CD workflow.
EventBus
It enables central communication to decoupled classes with just a few lines of code – simplifying the code, removing dependencies, and speeding up app development.
