Maven

Manifests are now created properly within JARs. There was a temporary problem
with this when moving from Ant 1.4.1 to Ant 1.5. Tags created with the
define:tag will now execute N times within the same goal. The deploy:copy-deps
tag will now take an optional excludes attribute which will accept a list of
dependency IDs where each dependency that is listed will be excluded from the
copy. Execution of the maven.bat file has been corrected for Win9x systems.
Time stats shown at the end of a build are now correct. AspjectJ plug-in has
been added. The Eclipse plug-in has been added.

Jelly is now used for all XML scripting instead of Ant build files, which still provides Ant semantics but provides greater flexibility in processing your builds. Plugins can now be packaged in JARs and dropped into your Maven installation to add new functionality to your builds. IBiblio is now being used as a primary Maven repository, providing high availability, reliability, and bandwidth. The Reactor, which is a tool that allows you to process an arbitrary set of projects, is in its first working form.

Checkstyle was integrated. A maven installation
update mechanism was created, allowing you to
easily update your Maven installation. A POM
update mechanism was added that will move your
Maven projects forward easily as Maven improves.
The updater will transform your project
descriptor, properties files, and the project
structure itself, if required. Testing has been
simplified and made safer. An XML Schema and
validation mechanism have been added.