[kyllo]

Task running is more what Ant is for, isn't it? Maven is more of a dependency management tool than a task runner. A lot of Java projects use both tools together for builds.

I've never used it, but MSBuild sounds like Microsoft's version of Ant to me.

[eropple]

MSBuild has a lot of Ant-yness to it, yes. However, I quibble with your definition of Maven as a dependency manager--it has one (and the independent implementation that can work with Maven repos is Apache Ivy) but I've never seen a Java project use both. Usually somebody jams some sort of runner into a Maven project as a different build step or something.

[kyllo]

Usually somebody jams some sort of runner into a Maven project as a different build step or something

Like this? http://maven.apache.org/ant-tasks/

[eropple]

If you're lucky. I've seen a lot more home-rolled ones in Java.

[kyllo]

Yeah... I've also worked on corporate Java projects with no Ant, Maven, nor hand-rolled substitute, where the build process was to download the dependencies' jars from the internet manually into /lib.