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It would be nice if gmake had some predefined, portable, macros for working with Java, so XML clutter like Ant and Maven could be shown the door. I so prefer r

It would be nice if gmake had some predefined, portable, macros for working with Java, so XML clutter like Ant and Maven could be shown the door. I so prefer reading makefiles to a sea of XML gibberish. mytarget: source1 source2 do-something -o mytarget source1 source2 so much easier to read than Ant tasks. (and, yes, there are ways to get the file lists into symbols without explicitly enumerating them) Ant, and by extension, Maven, was a huge step backward. Sure, have a way to make portable commands, BUT, was XML really needed??? And, does every task have to be built such that the task checks dependency timestamps, rather than the framework that calls the task???

lsd5you 13y ago
Isn't what you are saying is that if Make was better then it could be better than Ant? Ant and Maven both have plenty of issues, but being dissimilar from make is not one of them. At the end of the day 'file based' tools like Make are not really suitable for Java which is more concerned with source directories - rightly so in my opinion. There is no program that cannot be written because of a consistent source layout. There are ways to enumerate files, but nothing good (in my experience) and by the time you are using them the make files are no longer easy to read (never mind debug). Make also has this Faustian pact thing going on. Access to the shell and all of its power and familiarity, but at the (significant) expense of portability.