Ant has been the historic underlying build tool for Netbeans projects, but over the years, not only has NB been a very good companion with Maven, Maven is also much more popular industry wide.
There was a comment on the user list recently about Java FX, and one reply was, paraphrasing, "the best way to use Java FX was to use Maven". I was also looking at the legacy NB Platform tutorials, which use Ant, but certainly need some updating. But that brought the question. Should one style of build be promoted over the other, are both systems "faithfully and fully supported", or is Ant going to perhaps slowly die on the vine of disinterest? Is there any internal mandate of ensuring compatibility between the two build system, especially in terms of ensuring high level things like wizards and whatnot work for both systems? If someone adds a new feature, contrived, "Create a Microprofile web service", is the project obligated (as much as it's obligated to do anything) to create a wizard for both Ant and Maven, or is it acceptable to only use one mechanism? Just curious if there's any formal position on the two systems and their status within the NB environment today.
