On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Martin Grotzke < [email protected]> wrote:
> Hi, > > in our next project I'd like to use buildr for build management. > Now I only have to convince my colleagues, why we should use buildr and > not maven or ant+ivy. > > I'd say it has the best of both worlds: > - standard build process (like maven) > - conventions for project/directory structure (like maven) > - dependency mgmt using maven repos > - and though it provides the flexibility as ant does > - all ant tasks can be used in buildr > > It has some advanteges over maven and ant: > - buildr is even easier and more flexible as ant since you don't have to > work with xml to do e.g. an if/then/else - just use ruby (no need to > create tasks/mojos) > - build profiles supporting inheritence (and usage of profile > variables/properties) > - much more compact than maven and ant > - great multi-module / multi-project support: if you have project A and > B, where B depends on A, then you can just build B, which > automatically triggers a build of A if necessary > - fast (I only compared it to maven) Another advantage is that plugins are very easy to write compared to Maven, or even Ant. (But I guess this all depends on your level of comfort with Ruby/Rake and available documentation/examples) To be fair to my colleagues I'd also like to mention the drawback I see: > - relatively new, so there might be some issues we run into > - not so many examples / documentation available (as it's new), > however, this is compensated by this great mailing list :) > - not so many built-in reporting-plugins available as they are available > for maven Depending on the culture of your company, you can run into some resistance when introducing a build system written in a different language than your mainstream language (Java?). It definitely helps if developers are comfortable with Ruby. I would recommend taking some time to study Rake (which is similar to Ant) since Buildr is based on the task-dependency model of Rake. Also, installing Ruby + Buildr can be relatively difficult on some computers compared to Maven/Ant ... It's generaly easy but there are still a few exceptions. We're here to help if you run into any issue... alex
