What do you use for a complex build process? [closed]

Question

I am trying to revamp our build process, which is currently a gigantic Ant build.xml that calls into other ant build files and executes several Java classes to perform more complex logic that would be impossible/scary to attemp in Ant.

Background:

• experience in Java and Ant, some Groovy
• Windows platforms

Goals:

• run as a combination of command line cron and when a servlet is posted to
• as simplified as possible, fewest languages and bouncing between techs

I need higher level logical power that a language like Java provides and Ant is pretty easy and we use the filtering to override default properties files for different clients. Mostly I'm wondering if there is something other than Ant/Java that people use.

Answer 1

Except the Ant you mentioned and the scarry make/autotools, the mainstream tools are:

• SCons
• Jam
• CMake
• Maven

I use SCons, because it is python based, well-funded and elegant. Jam seems to be the most pragmatic one. I don't know too much about CMake. Maven may be the choice for you as it is Java centric and more high level than Ant.

More you can find at wikipedia: List of built tools