I've had a go at Maven a few times, hoping to make it work but I always run into the same issues:
1. It is very difficult to configure a hermetic Maven build that doesn't rely on external resources. There are third-party repository managers, but none of them worked well enough to replace the 'dependencies in SVN' model.
2. Maven artifacts were often far out of date. RedHat has its own Hibernate-focused repository now, but this wasn't always the case. I'd find myself trying to get the latest version of dbcp or another commons project to get a bugfix and finding that it wasn't packaged.
3. Support for multiple source-based projects that depend on each other felt bolted on. I can't remember the details, but you couldn't build more than one project from source without specifying a link to a parent project from each child project, which then referenced each of its children.
I've written and rewritten countless build systems (from batch files last millenium to Ant/NAnt/MSBuild) and they always end up being simple wrappers over javac/junit that manage transitive dependencies and build cycle ordering. The tricky part is ensuring that your IDE's dependencies match those in your build system.
I recommend Ivy as an alternative to straight Ant or Maven that does dependencies and ordering well, but doesn't require you to buy in to any special build philosophy: http://ant.apache.org/ivy/
Quick addendum: Ivy has its own quirks and is far too complex under the hood for my taste, but does the job well if you stick to straight dependency management. If you can avoid using anything on top of pure Ant scripts to build your project it'll make your life way easier.
1. It is very difficult to configure a hermetic Maven build that doesn't rely on external resources. There are third-party repository managers, but none of them worked well enough to replace the 'dependencies in SVN' model.
2. Maven artifacts were often far out of date. RedHat has its own Hibernate-focused repository now, but this wasn't always the case. I'd find myself trying to get the latest version of dbcp or another commons project to get a bugfix and finding that it wasn't packaged.
3. Support for multiple source-based projects that depend on each other felt bolted on. I can't remember the details, but you couldn't build more than one project from source without specifying a link to a parent project from each child project, which then referenced each of its children.
I've written and rewritten countless build systems (from batch files last millenium to Ant/NAnt/MSBuild) and they always end up being simple wrappers over javac/junit that manage transitive dependencies and build cycle ordering. The tricky part is ensuring that your IDE's dependencies match those in your build system.
I recommend Ivy as an alternative to straight Ant or Maven that does dependencies and ordering well, but doesn't require you to buy in to any special build philosophy: http://ant.apache.org/ivy/
Quick addendum: Ivy has its own quirks and is far too complex under the hood for my taste, but does the job well if you stick to straight dependency management. If you can avoid using anything on top of pure Ant scripts to build your project it'll make your life way easier.