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Like many others I really like Ant and I intend to keep using it until something better comes along. And I strongly feel that when you try to use *only* Maven for everything, you give up control over a few things. Are there things that Ant does better than Maven? Oh yes, IMHO. Here are a few examples of typical Java web-app build related stuff that turn out to be “edge cases” in Maven meaning that you have to struggle, read up on obscure plugins or resort to ugly hacks in order to get things to work. Fortunately, there *is* a way to get the information about dependencies from your Maven “pom.xml” project file across to your Ant “build.xml” file. I am referring to the Maven Ant Tasks. Let me end by addressing the question: should projects use Ivy instead?