Imho Maven, despite its wide range of plugins and extentions mechanisms, is quite "convention over configuration" (cought cought) and really is made for project

Imho Maven, despite its wide range of plugins and extentions mechanisms, is quite "convention over configuration" (cought cought) and really is made for projects that can adapt to its conventions, and to the popular Java artifacts layouts. The problem is, when it does not suits you, the competition is not really well known. Gradle maybe ?