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layout: default
title: Apache Buildr
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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

Highlights from Buildr 1.4.8 (Nov 11th, 2012)

* Change: Revert to importing non-verbose FileUtils utility methods to match buildr 1.4.6 release and earlier.
* Added:  Experimental support for jacoco code coverage tool.
* Fixed:  BUILDR-655 - Support JDK1.7 under OSX
* Change: Updated dependency versions;
          - builder (3.1.3)
          - rubyforge (2.0.4)
          - net-ssh (2.6.0)
          - hoe (3.1.0)
          - rjb (1.4.2)
          - rdoc (3.12)
          - xml-simple (1.1.1)
          - rspec-expectations (2.11.3)
          - rspec-mocks (2.11.3)
          - rspec-core (2.11.1)
          - rspec (2.11.0)
          - rubyzip (0.9.9)
* Added:  BUILDR-652 Generate buildfile from Eclipse workspace. (Niklaus Giger)
* Fixed:  BUILDR-627 Support explicitly listed source files in buildr cc task. (Christopher Tiwald)
* Fixed:  BUILDR-606 Transitive artifact resolution should not include artifacts in 'provided' scope in poms to
          match maven behaviour. (Julio Arias)
* Change: BUILDR-640 Enable building jekyll and rdoc under more rubies. (Niklaus Giger)
* Change: Mark Buildr:Bnd.remote_repository as deprecated as dependencies appear in maven central.
* Added:  BUILDR-654 Add the ability to configure the version of BND used by bnd addon. (Niklaus Giger)
* Added:  Create the git_auto_version addon that automatically specifies a version for a git project based
          on git describe.
* Added:  Integrate with Zinc (incremental compilation wrapper for scalac 2.9+)
* Change: Default to Scala 2.9.2, ScalaTest 1.8, Scala Specs2 1.11,
          ScalaCheck 1.10.0.
* Change: Scala artifact repository changed to
          http://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/releases
* Added:  BUILDR-645 Support Mercurial as a version control system (Tan Quach)
* Fixed:  BUILDR-646 TGZ files do not keep their permissions when extracted
          via Buildr::Unzip#extract
* Added:  Add add_exploded_ear_artifact and add_exploded_ejb_artifact to the idea project extension.
* Change: Default to using Checkstyle 5.5 in the checkstyle addon.
* Fixed:  Fix the add_exploded_war_artifact method on the idea project by adding in missing method
          `partition_dependencies`.
* Fixed:  Fix the extension of the gwt plugin so that it can be required as an addon.
* Fixed:  Fix the undefined default_web_xml variable in the add_web_facet method on the idea project.

This is a partial list -- 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.

Developed with !http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/features/ruby_banners/ruby1/ruby120x30_white.gif(Developed with RubyMine)!:http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/features?utm_source=RubyMineUser&utm_medium=Banner&utm_campaign=RubyMine