Ugh. Why can't we just make javac [STAR].java work? Tarball the resulting .class files, make sure to have one called Main.class that is the entrypoint, GPG sign the tarball and you should be ready to distribute.

Yeah I know it doesn't work like this now, but the designers of the entire Java/Android ecosystem should have designed it to be that simple.

The moment you get any of these build systems involved you instantly lose all hopes of DRY coding. Excerpts from an Ant build.xml file:

    <target name="jar" depends="compile">
        <mkdir dir="jar" />
        <jar destfile="jar/HelloWorld.jar" basedir="classes">
            <manifest>
                <attribute name="Main-Class" 
                  value="antExample.HelloWorld" />
            </manifest>
        </jar>
    </target>
 
    <target name="run" depends="jar">
        <java jar="jar/HelloWorld.jar" fork="true" />
    </target>

I see "HelloWorld" repeated 3 times. MASSIVE fail. I'd rather no build system than deal with this level of repetitiveness. It's bad enough that Java requires the file name == class name which is already a case of repetition (that design decision is fine with me but then files should start with "class {" and not "class Foo {")