Maven : Advantages and drawbacks

Yesterday, I went to the Marseille JUG.The subject was "About Maven" presented by Arnaud Héritier.I didn't know a lot Maven So here is the summary, i can do :

Advantages:


- Manage library version.
It's a major advantage ! Maven manage library version whereas Ant didn't.Before, all the library was in the lib dirctory.Now Maven can tell for a version, the library it used.
Note : Ant can do that with Ivy
- Maven Conventions.
- It exists plugins on IDE like Eclipse, Netbeans, intellij idea

Drawbacks :


- Library repositories are not always safe.
In maven, you can define one or severeal repositories of library on the net.However, sometimes if the management of library are bad, you can have compile error or differences between jar on different repositories.
- Maven Conventions.
- Learning Maven is long in comparaison of Ant.
- http://blog.codeeg.com/2008/06/28/25-things-i-hate-about-maven/

To conclude, Maven is became the build tool.Enterprise use it more and more.
The major drawback is that you need to learn it but, at the end you will have benefit with maintenance and use.That's not the case of Ant.