Maven learning curve & overhead for small/medium projects?

what would be (rough estimation, average, of course) the initial learning and setup curve and subsequent overhead for using Maven for C++/Eclipse/Linux project of small to medium size?

We are 4 developers at the beginning of the way. We currently have ~20 native eclipse C++ (CDT) "projects", which we compile interactively. We would like to have an automated checkout & build script.

It seems a bit overkill at this stage, but perhaps we should adopt it sooner then later, provided that it does not incur an overhead. We don't have bandwidth for extensive configuration management right now. Thanks a lot!

EDITED / DETAILED:

I realize I haven't described my needs well enough. Having read the references provided below, I see that CI tool seems an overkill for us at the moment. What I'd like to have is a build tool that is well integrated with eclipse on one han开发者_如何学运维d, and allows offline, non-interactive builds on the other. I enjoy the simplicity of working with eclipse projects: you just add files, add references to internal components and 3rd part libs as they add up, and that's it. You don't need to manually maintain makefiles or the like. The trouble with it, as with MSVS a few years ago when I worked with it, is that it does not give you an option of non-interactive builds. So, does such tool exist?

First, while Maven has some support to build C++ projects with the maven-native-plugin or, if you already are using Make, with the maven-make-plugin from the c-builds suite, this is not a common use case and there aren't widely used. So while it should be possible, you won't get support and find resources easily (just Google a bit or browse the maven users list to get an idea).

Second, if you add to this that you'll have to learn Maven in the same time, then it seems reasonable to say that you are not taking the easiest path.

So, instead, I'd stick with more traditional tools and/or Ant. For the continuous integration itself, I've seen several references mentioning the use of CruseControl to build a C++ project. Refer to What continuous integration tool is best for a C++ project? or UsingCruiseControlWithCplusPlus for example. But I guess the principles are transposable to another CI engine (like Hudson that I find much more easy to use than CruiseControl).