make vs ant

[und3rdog]

Background: Doing a respectably large program for an OO class based in Java, Working as part of a 3 member team.

Question: Given only one of us has any background on building with ant, which would be better?

[defkewl]

Isn't ant only for Java? and make for Perl and C/C++ ?

[cow_racer]

Ant is the way to go. It is easier to write. But a little slower. And it also does dependency check. Make only uses time stamp to determine which files to compile. A file changed may affect other classes in some other unchanged files, but because Make only use time stamp, these effected files are not recompiled. I heard Jikes can create dependency for Make to use, but so far I never got that to work. Jikes simply crash on me.

[vague-]

Isn't ant only for Java? and make for Perl and C/C++ ?

No, Ant can have many targets, including building language other than Java. Perl might be a special case due to the MakeMaker magic and such. It is not that you could not use Ant to build a Perl project, it just would not slot in with the default system.

Personally, I would use Ant. The format is fairly easy to learn, it will be supported (if via plug-ins) in most IDEs and Java-aware programmer's text editors and most targets are cross-platform (assuming that your Java application probably is, also).