I have a medium size project split into 3 modules: Core, plugins (in short its an interpretation layer), and implementation. There are a few global dependencies, and module specific dependencies. There is a custom ant target for generating javadoc excluding the implementation (for obvious reasons). This is stored in an public online SVN repository and therefor needs to be independent of any machine sans the JRE
Right now I’m using the built in NetBeans project management, and it sucks, probably mainly do the fact that the project management system was not designed for modules. Lack of a global library set (you can import a library specific to your nb installation, but then it doesn’t get updated), lack of auto resolving of library dependencies (dependency on a project means the project and its dependencies), lack of an independent multi-project formatting style (either tied to profile specific “Global options” or individually setup and synced module-specific options), and other things make managing my project a pain.
When I was experimenting with IDEA, one of the things I loved was its project management. It was close to what I wanted, but like most things in IDEA could of been simpler. However the IDE itself was bad (not up for debate), so I switched back to NetBeans. And Maven looks bad, both from having to traverse its file structure manually and general opinion.
Are their better options out there that can be stored in a standard SVN repository with limited tools to use, are pretty easy to use for 1-3 developers, and for 2-5 modules? It must be able to handle java, and (in the perfect world) integration with NetBeans.
Honestly maven is your best bet. I wouldn’t knock it you haven’t actually tried it yet. It tends to be a very divisive technology, but those who love it love it for a damn good reason. If you are someone who prefers to keep your hands off the build script/files after you initially set it up, and it looks like you are given you were using Netbeans’ built in projects which generate an ant build.xml behind the scenes, then you should just try maven and see what happens.
I’m not sure why you think you need to "traverse the directory structure" with maven if you are in netbeans. See this screenshot for an example of what it looks like. You don’t ever see src/main/java or target/ or anything on the file system (unless you need to).
(source: netbeans.org)
If you use a maven multi-module project, you’ll get the modularity you are looking for within Netbeans as well. If you want a sample, go checkout an open source project that has tons of modules and load it in Netbeans and play around with it: http://camel.apache.org/source.html