Apache Buildr
Apache Buildr is a build system for Java-based applications, including support for Scala, Groovy and a growing number of JVM languages and tools. We wanted something that’s simple and intuitive to use, so we only need to tell it what to do, and it takes care of the rest. But also something we can easily extend for those one-off tasks, with a language that’s a joy to use. And of course, we wanted it to be fast, reliable and have outstanding dependency management.
Why Buildr Rocks
If you think about it, the question isn’t “Why use Buildr?”, it’s really “Why use anything else?” The advantages afforded by Buildr are so substantial, I really can’t see myself going with any other tool, at least not when I have a choice.
That’s still the strongest sell: it builds everything I need, and as I’ve needed more, I just got things working without a lot of fuss.
We used to rely on Ant, with a fairly extensive set of scripts. It worked but was expensive to maintain. The biggest mistake afterward was to migrate to Maven2. I could write pages of rants explaining all the problems we ran into and we still ended up with thousands of lines of XML.
The positive side effect for me as a java user is that I learn a little ruby, and that’s easy but lots of fun… :-)
I’ve cleaned up & migrated the Vamosa build process from 768 lines of Ant build.xml to 28 lines of Buildr.
What You Get
- A simple way to specify projects, and build large projects out of smaller sub-projects.
- Pre-canned tasks that require the least amount of configuration, keeping the build script DRY and simple.
- Compiling, copying and filtering resources, JUnit/TestNG test cases, APT source code generation, Javadoc and more.
- A dependency mechanism that only builds what has changed since the last release.
- A drop-in replacement for Maven 2.0, Buildr uses the same file layout, artifact specifications, local and remote repositories.
- All your Ant tasks are belong to us! Anything you can do with Ant, you can do with Buildr.
- No overhead for building “plugins” or configuration. Just write new tasks or functions.
- Buildr is Ruby all the way down. No one-off task is too demanding when you write code using variables, functions and objects.
- Simple way to upgrade to new versions.
- Did we mention fast?
So let’s get started. You can read the documentation online, or download the PDF.
What’s New
Highlights from Buildr 1.4.20 (2014-08-23)
- Fixed : Work around bug/feature of jruby 1.7.13 that caches Gem::Version
objects based on constructor parameters that causes issues with
Buildr as we mutate the version objects through monkey patching. - Change: Upgrade rjb dependency to 1.4.9.
- Change: BUILDR-701 – Update to JUnit 4.11. Submitted by Jean-Philippe Caruana.
- Added: Support the ‘report_level’ property on findbugs addon.
- Change: Update the findbugs addon to use the 3.0.0 version of Findbugs.
- Change: Update the findbugs addon to use the built-in findbugs stylesheet
to generate the html report. - Fixed: Ensure that the ‘single_intermediate_layout’ addon removes the top
level target and reports directories during ‘clean’ phase. - Added: Enhance idea project generation of ejb facet by looking for ejb
descriptors in location compatible with ejb-jars.
Highlights from Buildr 1.4.19 (2014-07-06)
- Fixed: BUILDR-700 – Ensure SNAPSHOT artifacts, constructed using the
download(artifact(‘group:artifact:jar:1-SNAPSHOT’) =>
‘http://example.com/…’) construct will correctly download the
artifacts from configured URL. - Fixed: BUILDR-700 – Fix bug where buildr was truncating SNAPSHOT files
that had not changed since last update check and HTTP was returning
“HTTP Not Modified” status. - Fixed: Fix bug introduced in 1.4.18 version of custom_pom addon where
poms are created for artifacts that have a classifier.
This is a partial list — see the CHANGELOG for full details.
Credits & Notices
The Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit organization, consider sponsoring and check the thanks page.
ColorCons, copyright of Ken Saunders. DejaVu fonts, copyright of Bitstream, Inc.
Community member quotes from a thread on Stack Overflow.
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