Now that JRuby is getting more and more mature, several people are thinking of finally doing something to improve the world of build scripts by replacing ant with rake.

My former colleague Matt Foemmel has starting doing this for real and is writing up progress on his FoemBlog. Matt's written more build scripts than most and around 2000 we both made the mistake of thinking an XML based build file was the way to go. We also both now believe you need a full scripting language. With so much invested in ant, it will still be around for a while, but we think rake is the better solution for the future.