The big thing is that many Java builds are not just blobs of binaries crammed together, but also have structure and metadata, sometimes generated on the fly.
Not all Java builds are simply compiles. There are several projects that rely on processing steps during the Java build. EAR files are jars within jars.
Then, of course, there's all of the dependencies.
The modern Maven based repository based dependency manager is a blessing and a curse. Drag and dropping an artifact into your project that inevitably downloads the entirety of the internet. Now you may wish to cull your dependency tree, so that needs to be expressible as well.
The primary benefit of Maven and the pom.xml file is that for a vast majority of applications it just work. Even better, its become a universal "project" format that many IDEs directly support. It well handles "dependency hell" in a cross tool way.
I wish Maven were a bit faster, but, simply, it's as fast as it can be for what it does. A good Ant build just flies, but Ant "doesn't do anything". It's just a bag of steps that it follows (for good and ill), in contrast to Mavens declarative style (for good and ill).
I have no experience with Gradle other than I've never run into enough problems with Maven to justify trying something else. On its surface, it doesn't really appeal to me. I was comfortable with Ant (I have no problem with XML), I'm mostly comfortable with Maven. I've not been unhappy enough with Maven to try and jump back to Ant w/Ivy.
Not all Java builds are simply compiles. There are several projects that rely on processing steps during the Java build. EAR files are jars within jars.
Then, of course, there's all of the dependencies.
The modern Maven based repository based dependency manager is a blessing and a curse. Drag and dropping an artifact into your project that inevitably downloads the entirety of the internet. Now you may wish to cull your dependency tree, so that needs to be expressible as well.
The primary benefit of Maven and the pom.xml file is that for a vast majority of applications it just work. Even better, its become a universal "project" format that many IDEs directly support. It well handles "dependency hell" in a cross tool way.
I wish Maven were a bit faster, but, simply, it's as fast as it can be for what it does. A good Ant build just flies, but Ant "doesn't do anything". It's just a bag of steps that it follows (for good and ill), in contrast to Mavens declarative style (for good and ill).
I have no experience with Gradle other than I've never run into enough problems with Maven to justify trying something else. On its surface, it doesn't really appeal to me. I was comfortable with Ant (I have no problem with XML), I'm mostly comfortable with Maven. I've not been unhappy enough with Maven to try and jump back to Ant w/Ivy.