What is the most elegant solution to managing various Java external libraries?

Question

Perhaps the reason I stalled learning Java until now is because I HATE how Java handles external libraries. I'm stuck keeping them in one place, adding them individually, fixing problems with versioning and every time I move/rename them, and copying and writing the classpath over and over each time I release a Java application.

There has to be an elegant solution to all of this. I keep all of my libraries (regardless of task, platform, or other) in their own little folder inside a "lib" folder in my development folder, kind of like this:

Dev
  -lib
    +JS-jQuery
    +Flex-Degrafa
    -Java-Xerces
      +Xerces-1.2.3
    +More libraries

I can use either Netbeans or Eclipse for Java dev, but none of them provide a very streamlined (and not to mention idiot-proof) way of managing all of these.

A nudge in the right direction or an online article/tutorial on this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can either use Ant + Ivy or Maven to manage your library dependencies.