--- layout: default title: 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. h2(#why). Why Buildr Rocks "Daniel Spiewak":http://www.codecommit.com/blog: bq. 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. "Tristan Juricek":http://tristanhunt.com/: bq. 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. "Matthieu Riou":http://offthelip.org/: bq. 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. "Martin Grotzke":http://www.javakaffee.de/blog/: bq. 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… :-) "Ijonas Kisselbach":http://twitter.com/ijonas/statuses/4134103928: bq. I've cleaned up & migrated the Vamosa build process from 768 lines of Ant build.xml to 28 lines of Buildr. h2(#what). 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":quick_start.html, or "download the PDF":buildr.pdf. h2(#news). What's New New in Buildr 1.4.0: * Support for Scala 2.8 compiler-level change detection and dependency tracking * Continuous compilation * Support for Eclipse classpath variables to avoid absolute pathnames in generated .classpath * "buildr test=only" will only run tests explicitly specified on the command line (and ignore transitive test dependencies) * Generic documentation framework (we do doc, not just javadoc) * New "test:failed" task to execute only tests that failed during last run * Project extensions (before/after_define) now support dependency ordering similar to Rake * Support unzipping tar.gz files * ScalaTest now generates JUnit XML reports in addition to text files. * Support protocol buffer code generation * Tested against Windows and Ubuntu on JRuby and MRI (and experimenting with Rubinius) * Dependency upgrades such as Ant 1.8.0, JUnit 4.7, JMock 2.5.1, Cobertura 1.9.4.1, Scala Specs 1.6.2.1, ScalaCheck 1.6, ScalaTest 1.0.1 * And 60+ bug fixes ! See the "CHANGELOG":CHANGELOG for full details. h2(#notices). Credits & Notices !http://www.apache.org/images/asf-logo.gif(A project of the Apache Software Foundation)!:http://www.apache.org The Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit organization, consider "sponsoring":http://www.apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html and check the "thanks":http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html page. "ColorCons":http://www.mouserunner.com/Spheres_ColoCons1_Free_Icons.html, copyright of Ken Saunders. "DejaVu fonts":http://dejavu.sourceforge.net, copyright of Bitstream, Inc. Community member quotes from a thread on "Stack Overflow":http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1015525/why-use-buildr-instead-of-ant-or-maven/1055864.