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Gradle vs Apache Maven: What are the differences?
Gradle: A powerful build system for the JVM. 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; Apache Maven: Apache build manager for Java projects. 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.
Gradle and Apache Maven belong to "Java Build Tools" category of the tech stack.
Some of the features offered by Gradle are:
- Declarative builds and build-by-convention
- Language for dependency based programming
- Structure your build
On the other hand, Apache Maven provides the following key features:
- Simple project setup that follows best practices - get a new project or module started in seconds
- Consistent usage across all projects means no ramp up time for new developers coming onto a project
- Superior dependency management including automatic updating, dependency closures (also known as transitive dependencies)
"Flexibility" is the top reason why over 106 developers like Gradle, while over 125 developers mention "Dependency management" as the leading cause for choosing Apache Maven.
Gradle and Apache Maven are both open source tools. Gradle with 9.23K GitHub stars and 2.7K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Apache Maven with 1.74K GitHub stars and 1.28K GitHub forks.
Netflix, Lyft, and 9GAG are some of the popular companies that use Gradle, whereas Apache Maven is used by Zillow, Intuit, and Zalando. Gradle has a broader approval, being mentioned in 465 company stacks & 360 developers stacks; compared to Apache Maven, which is listed in 305 company stacks and 142 developer stacks.
Pros of Gradle
- Flexibility110
- Easy to use51
- Groovy dsl47
- Slow build time22
- Crazy memory leaks10
- Fast incremental builds8
- Kotlin DSL5
- Windows Support1
Pros of Apache Maven
- Dependency management137
- Necessary evil70
- I’d rather code my app, not my build60
- Publishing packaged artifacts48
- Convention over configuration43
- Modularisation18
- Consistency across builds11
- Prevents overengineering using scripting6
- Runs Tests4
- Lot of cool plugins4
- Extensible3
- Hard to customize2
- Runs on Linux2
- Runs on OS X1
- Slow incremental build1
- Inconsistent buillds1
- Undeterminisc1
- Good IDE tooling1
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Cons of Gradle
- Inactionnable documentation8
- It is just the mess of Ant++6
- Hard to decide: ten or more ways to achieve one goal4
- Bad Eclipse tooling2
- Dependency on groovy2
Cons of Apache Maven
- Complex6
- Inconsistent buillds1
- Not many plugin-alternatives0
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