How can I replace Ant with Maven?

Question

What are the minimum steps I should follow to replace Ant with Maven?

Answer 1

1. Set up your project according to the standard directory layout.
2. Create a minimal pom.xml with groupId, artifactId and version.
3. Add your dependencies to the pom.xml

You should now be able to build a simple project, run the tests and package it.

Answer 2

Anecdote: Once you are in Maven, the reverse trip (though why would you ever go back!) is so simple:

mvn ant:ant

generates functionally equivalent ant scripts. Now if only an Ant->Maven generator existed.

Answer 3

See these two posts for details:

How to Convert from Ant to Maven

Incrementally Improving a Maven build

Answer 4

I have built an automated script to migrate Ant builds to Maven. You can find more information here:

http://erichauser.net/2009/10/26/ant2maven-easy-migration-from-ant-to-maven-with-nexus/

There is a link to the GitHub repository at the bottom which contains the script.

Answer 5

You can have a look to ant2maven script, that builds pom.xml from Ant scripts. I've never tried it, but it can be used to have a good pom.xml to start with...