Maven

A build tool for Java plus a package manager

The short version:

• Maven adds package management to the functions that you get with Ant.
• By package management, I mean that instead of you having to manage the process of obtaining all the .jar files for third party library that your project may depend on (and the .jars that those files depend on, and so on…), maven manages that for you.
• If you are doing serious software development (e.g. a CS48 project) in Java, you should probably be using Maven or Gradle (not Ant, and certainly not “just winging it with shell scripts”, or relying on a specific IDE.)

There is more information about Maven at the Maven page on the CS56 site