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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Java Build Tools
  5. Buck vs Gradle

Buck vs Gradle

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Gradle
Gradle
Stacks24.3K
Followers9.8K
Votes254
GitHub Stars18.1K
Forks5.0K
Buck
Buck
Stacks27
Followers145
Votes8
GitHub Stars8.6K
Forks1.1K

Buck vs Gradle: What are the differences?

  1. 1. Language Support: One key difference between Buck and Gradle is the language support they offer. Buck is primarily designed for building projects written in Java, Android, and C/C++, whereas Gradle supports a wider range of languages including Java, Kotlin, Groovy, Scala, and more.
  2. 2. Build Speed: Another major difference lies in the build speed of these build systems. Buck is known for its fast and efficient incremental builds, as it only rebuilds the necessary dependencies. On the other hand, Gradle may suffer from slower build times, especially for large projects, due to its more generic and flexible model.
  3. 3. Configuration Style: Buck and Gradle also differ in their configuration styles. Buck uses a declarative approach, where users define the build rules explicitly in a Buck configuration file. In contrast, Gradle uses a more flexible and imperative DSL (Domain Specific Language) that allows users to write build scripts with extensive customization.
  4. 4. Build Caching: When it comes to build caching, Buck and Gradle have different mechanisms. Buck has built-in support for caching build artifacts, dependencies, and intermediate build results. This helps to significantly reduce the build time by reusing previously built components. Gradle, on the other hand, requires additional plugins or configuration to enable build caching.
  5. 5. Dependency Management: Buck and Gradle also vary in their approach to dependency management. Buck uses a more explicit and strict mechanism, where dependencies are explicitly declared in the build configuration files. Gradle, on the other hand, provides a more sophisticated and flexible dependency management system, including transitive dependency resolution and support for multiple repositories.
  6. 6. Parallel Execution: Lastly, Buck and Gradle differ in their parallel execution capabilities. Buck is known for its efficient parallelization, where it can execute multiple tasks in parallel, leveraging the dependency graph and avoiding unnecessary sequential steps. Gradle, although it also supports parallel execution, may not utilize it as optimally as Buck due to its more flexible and complex build model.

In Summary, Buck and Gradle differ in language support, build speed, configuration style, build caching, dependency management, and parallel execution.

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Detailed Comparison

Gradle
Gradle
Buck
Buck

Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. If you are building, testing, publishing, and deploying software on any platform, Gradle offers a flexible model that can support the entire development lifecycle from compiling and packaging code to publishing web sites.

Buck encourages the creation of small, reusable modules consisting of code and resources, and supports a variety of languages on many platforms.

Declarative builds and build-by-convention;Language for dependency based programming;Structure your build;Deep API;Gradle scales;Multi-project builds;Many ways to manage your dependencies;Gradle is the first build integration tool
Speed up your Android builds. Buck builds independent artifacts in parallel to take advantage of multiple cores. Further, it reduces incremental build times by keeping track of unchanged modules so that the minimal set of modules is rebuilt.;Introduce ad-hoc build steps for building artifacts that are not supported out-of-the-box using the standard Ant build scripts for Android.;Keep the logic for generating build rules in the build system instead of requiring a separate system to generate build files.;Generate code-coverage metrics for your unit tests.;Generate an IntelliJ project based on your build rules. This makes Buck ideal for both local development builds in an IDE as well as headless builds on a continuous integration machine.;Make sense of your build dependencie
Statistics
GitHub Stars
18.1K
GitHub Stars
8.6K
GitHub Forks
5.0K
GitHub Forks
1.1K
Stacks
24.3K
Stacks
27
Followers
9.8K
Followers
145
Votes
254
Votes
8
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 110
    Flexibility
  • 51
    Easy to use
  • 47
    Groovy dsl
  • 22
    Slow build time
  • 10
    Crazy memory leaks
Cons
  • 8
    Inactionnable documentation
  • 6
    It is just the mess of Ant++
  • 4
    Hard to decide: ten or more ways to achieve one goal
  • 2
    Bad Eclipse tooling
  • 2
    Dependency on groovy
Pros
  • 4
    Fast
  • 1
    Facebook
  • 1
    Java
  • 1
    Windows Support
  • 1
    Runs on OSX
Cons
  • 2
    Lack of Documentation
  • 1
    Learning Curve
Integrations
No integrations available
Java
Java
Android SDK
Android SDK
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)

What are some alternatives to Gradle, Buck?

Apache Maven

Apache Maven

Maven allows a project to build using its project object model (POM) and a set of plugins that are shared by all projects using Maven, providing a uniform build system. Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build saving you immense amounts of time when trying to navigate many projects.

Bazel

Bazel

Bazel is a build tool that builds code quickly and reliably. It is used to build the majority of Google's software, and thus it has been designed to handle build problems present in Google's development environment.

Pants

Pants

Pants is a build system for Java, Scala and Python. It works particularly well for a source code repository that contains many distinct projects.

JitPack

JitPack

JitPack is an easy to use package repository for Gradle/Sbt and Maven projects. We build GitHub projects on demand and provides ready-to-use packages.

SBT

SBT

It is similar to Java's Maven and Ant. Its main features are: Native support for compiling Scala code and integrating with many Scala test frameworks.

Apache Ant

Apache Ant

Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like Make, without Make's wrinkles and with the full portability of pure Java code.

Please

Please

Please is a cross-language build system with an emphasis on high performance, extensibility and reproduceability. It supports a number of popular languages and can automate nearly any aspect of your build process.

CMake

CMake

It is used to control the software compilation process using simple platform and compiler independent configuration files, and generate native makefiles and workspaces that can be used in the compiler environment of the user's choice.

Sonatype Nexus

Sonatype Nexus

It is an open source repository that supports many artifact formats, including Docker, Java™ and npm. With the Nexus tool integration, pipelines in your toolchain can publish and retrieve versioned apps and their dependencies

JFrog Artifactory

JFrog Artifactory

It integrates with your existing ecosystem supporting end-to-end binary management that overcomes the complexity of working with different software package management systems, and provides consistency to your CI/CD workflow.

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