"make" is a standard "build automation" utility which is pretty much available on *nix like platforms. For more info, read this . The core concept is that instead of firing the commands required to "build" a project again and again, you stuff them in a "makefile" and distribute them to the users to allow them to build stuff without knowing the internal dependencies/structure of the project.
Apache Ant is similar to "make" in the sense that it is a build automation tool *but* differs in the sense that it uses "XML" as the automation language instead of a home grown one (like make does). Also you won't be completely able to understand the statement "without make's wrinkles" unless you have used "make". For the time being, just assume that make has it's pretty share of problems. If you need more info, try this .
BTW, Ant is pretty much a legacy solution when it comes to "build automation" in Java land these days. Maven is the de-facto tool for both build and dependency management solution when it comes to Java projects. Of course, it still has its share of problems (using XML being one of them). AFAIK, Gradle works towards the goal of using Groovy, a full fledged DSLish language for build automation and at the same time using Ivy under the hood for dependency management but I'm not sure how it works when it comes to integrating with an IDE (Eclipse/Netbeans).
TL;DR: Use Maven if you are programming in an IDE, it just works and manages the dirty job of handling dependencies for you without having to fiddle with classpath etc.
