Has anybody successfully used make to build java code? I realize there are any number of other options (ant, maven, and gradle arguably being the most popular).
In fact, I realize that the whole idea of using make is probably outright foolish owing to the intertwined nature of the classpath (which expresses runtime dependencies) and compile-time dependencies (which may not be available in compiled form on the classpath) in Java. I'm merely curious if it can be done.
The problem with using make here is transitive dependency resolution.
Many of the new build systems have it "built in" now a days.
Maybe make could wrap something that does that? Either way...I wouldn't recommend it unless it wrapped something that understood maven central.
Sure it can be done. Long, long ago, before Ant existed, I worked on a big Java project built entirely with javac and GNU make. In fact javac's built-in dependency tracking makes this significantly easier than with C.
A long time ago I had a build system for C++ and Java. It worked fine. The issue is generally that you want it to work on Windows and Unix, and then life is hell...
In fact, I realize that the whole idea of using make is probably outright foolish owing to the intertwined nature of the classpath (which expresses runtime dependencies) and compile-time dependencies (which may not be available in compiled form on the classpath) in Java. I'm merely curious if it can be done.