I've been trying to reel in a rumor I heard about Google's Android team creating a new build system. It's supposedly called "Presto," and it's going to be an open source project as soon as it gets prettier. Unfortunately, that's all I was able to find out so far, and Googlers can be quite tight-lipped, even when plied with food and beverage.

So, rather than burn any contacts, I felt we should take a gander at what a new build system from Google would do to the Java market. Right now, the world of build and deploy tools in Java is at about the same point Java SCM stuff was in 2004. Remember the move from CVS to Subversion? That seems to be happening with Ant, but slowly. Maven and Hudson/Jenkins are still quite popular, but according to the Eclipse Community Survey, Ant is still the king, and both Hudson/Jenkins and Maven are fighting over 30% of the build market, each.

Ant, as the survey shows, is still the king. Which is kind of shocking. It's not that Ant is bad, but it does get out of hand very quickly unless you keep an eye on those XML files. Usually that means someone has to be the Ant guy. On the other hand, Maven solves most of Ant's problems, but requires a bit of restructuring for your repositories and other such assets. Hudson and Jenkins are terrific for continuous integrations, but the split that's happened there ensures a divided community. As a kind commenter has pointed out, all three of these systems can be used together, or independently, so they're not really competing for market share. Still, Ant is still the most popular build component in the Java world, undeniably.

Into this, throw a brand new build system from developer-favorite Google. I'd expect that, though it'll be from the Android team, Presto might just work out for any Java team after a bit of modification from the community. And considering that the Android team is the fastest one at Google, right now, you can bet Presto will support continuous integration. I'm envisioning some sort of Web-administered build server that connects to everything. Expect support for testing on Selenium and building with Harmony, right off the bat.

But, again, I'm speculating. At this point, all I know is that Presto will eventually be an open source build system from Google, coming out of the Android team. We'll just all have to wait and see what form it takes, because I've had little success prying free more information on the subject.