I am working on a Spring Web Project that we are using Subversion, Eclipse and JBoss to build it.
The way we have it now is that we check everything into Subversion, the source code, jars that the project needs (Spring, Log4J, etc), so at any time someone can go to Subversion and rebuild the project.
Most of the projects at this firm only have one programmer on each project and the firm only has 3 programmers anyway. We are thinking about using Maven, but I am starting to think that it is overkill… Can I please get some feed back about your views on this?
If you have a system that works for you, then don’t change it.
On the other hand Maven helps a lot in keeping up with dependencies changes.
In most cases with Maven you have to update a dependency version in one place and a new version of that dependency is there ready to be tested and used.
If you decided to switch to Maven, you must have some kind of local repository management system like Nexus. Think of it like a source control for your binary dependencies. Another must would be Maven support in your choice of IDE. I think at this point all major Java IDEs have it.
At one point I was exactly in the same predicament and decided that it was worth it to switch (and it was).
However, mastering the whole setup may be daunting. If nobody at your company did it before, I think it may take somebody on your team 4-6 weeks to do a conversion project (learing Maven concepts, setting up POMs, integrating with IDE, etc.). Hence weigh carefully future benefits against current deadlines.