To some degree, it competes with Apache Maven, which also manages dependencies.

However, Maven is a complete build tool, whereas Ivy focuses purely on managing transitive dependencies.

Jayasoft first created Ivy in September, 2004, with Xavier Hanin serving as the principal architect and developer of the project.

Jayasoft moved hosting of Ivy (then at version 1.4.1) to Apache Incubator in October 2006.

Since then, the project has undergone package renaming to reflect its association with the Apache Software Foundation.