Java build tools. > do you use them? why? > worth using

>>59115628
I havent touched any building tool like ant or similiar since I finished uni. All the projects are either too small to bother or so big with 999+ dependencies only IDE handles the building alone with extra plugins like maven.

All I had to do was to master the ide. I recommend you the same, master some ide.

>>59116303
surprise, surprise
if you're using an IDE, you're using a build tool

every Java IDE uses either ant, maven or gradle

>>59115628
I use SBT (http://www.scala-sbt.org/, from the Scala ecosystem), even for Java.

It can pull typical maven dependencies and all that, and it supports Java just fine.

[Never mind it's about the most powerful tool in the whole ecosystem.]

>>59116377
By the way, this is a typical build.sbt configuration file (taken from https://www.lightbend.com/activator/template/hello-akka-java8, with extra comments by me):

// stuff you yourself use to name and version your project
name := "hello-akka-java8"
version := "1.0"

scalaVersion := "2.10.3"

javacOptions ++= Seq("-source", "1.8", "-target", "1.8", "-Xlint")

// leads to dependencies being downloaded off the default maven repositories and injected into the build path so your program can use it
libraryDependencies ++= Seq(
  "com.typesafe.akka" %% "akka-actor" % "2.3.1"
)

// bonus Java8 check on initialization
initialize := {
  val _ = initialize.value
  if (sys.props("java.specification.version") != "1.8")
    sys.error("Java 8 is required for this project.")
}

After you got this you just throw code into the src/main/java subdirectory (relative to this build.sbt file).

SBT will do your "compile", "run", "test" or whatever else for you, even automatically on file changes (~compile, ~run, ~test).

[That's just the start though, SBT can do just about fucking everything ever.]