Gradle vs Apache Maven

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Gradle

15.4K
9K
+ 1
254
Apache Maven

3.2K
1.7K
+ 1
413
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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.

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Pros of Gradle
Pros of Apache Maven
  • 110
    Flexibility
  • 51
    Easy to use
  • 47
    Groovy dsl
  • 22
    Slow build time
  • 10
    Crazy memory leaks
  • 8
    Fast incremental builds
  • 5
    Kotlin DSL
  • 1
    Windows Support
  • 137
    Dependency management
  • 70
    Necessary evil
  • 60
    I’d rather code my app, not my build
  • 48
    Publishing packaged artifacts
  • 43
    Convention over configuration
  • 18
    Modularisation
  • 11
    Consistency across builds
  • 6
    Prevents overengineering using scripting
  • 4
    Runs Tests
  • 4
    Lot of cool plugins
  • 3
    Extensible
  • 2
    Hard to customize
  • 2
    Runs on Linux
  • 1
    Runs on OS X
  • 1
    Slow incremental build
  • 1
    Inconsistent buillds
  • 1
    Undeterminisc
  • 1
    Good IDE tooling

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Cons of Gradle
Cons of Apache Maven
  • 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
  • 6
    Complex
  • 1
    Inconsistent buillds
  • 0
    Not many plugin-alternatives

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What is Gradle?

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.

What is 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.

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What companies use Gradle?
What companies use Apache Maven?
See which teams inside your own company are using Gradle or Apache Maven.
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What tools integrate with Gradle?
What tools integrate with Apache Maven?

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What are some alternatives to Gradle and Apache Maven?
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.
Jenkins
In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.
Groovy
It is a powerful multi-faceted programming language for the JVM platform. It supports a spectrum of programming styles incorporating features from dynamic languages such as optional and duck typing, but also static compilation and static type checking at levels similar to or greater than Java through its extensible static type checker. It aims to greatly increase developer productivity with many powerful features but also a concise, familiar and easy to learn syntax.
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.
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.
See all alternatives