Some of my pet peeves with Maven:
The XML definition is super clumsy and verbose. Have they never heard of attributes?
In its default configuration, it always scours the 'net on every operation. Regardless of whether this is useful for anything, it looks extremely silly to need Internet access for "clean".
Again in the default, if I'm not careful to specify exact version numbers, it will pull the very latest updates off the 'net, regardless of whether these newest versions introduce dependency errors. In other words, you're placed at the mercy of other peoples' dependency management.
The solution to all this network access is to turn it off by adding the -o option. But you have to remember to turn it off if you really want to do dependency updating!
Another solution is to install your own "source control" server for dependencies. Surprise: Most projects already have source control, only that works with no additional setup!
Maven builds are incredibly slow. Fiddling with network updates alleviates this, but Maven builds are still slow. And horribly verbose.
The Maven plugin (M2Eclipse) integrates most poorly with Eclipse. Eclipse integrates reasonably smoothly with version control software and with Ant. Maven integration is very clunky and ugly by comparison. Did I mention slow?
Maven continues to be buggy. Error messages are unhelpful. Too many developers are suffering from this.
