[chrismaeda]

I've had the opposite experience. I've converted 2-3 complex build systems implemented in different flavors of make to ant. It's tedious but it's doable. And once you get to ant, it's a lot easier to maintain compared to make.

I looked at maven a couple time but could never figure out how to convert a make-based build to maven because there is always a bunch of weird hacks lurking in the makefile. However, I do see how maven would be fine for a new project.

[cbsmith]

Honestly, make based projects are generally infinitely easier to parse and manipulate than Maven. Maven helps by providing a fixed organizational structure that is immediately familiar (and this is the advantage of being opinionated that I do think the article understates), but you can keep the structure and use make and be much better for it.