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Gradle has problems, but it doesn't seem worse to me than making builds in Eclipse was. I would love to hear why people think it is better or worse. I agree m

Gradle has problems, but it doesn't seem worse to me than making builds in Eclipse was. I would love to hear why people think it is better or worse. I agree multidex is terrible. Google please fix this. I do not know when I should use a fragment instead of a view. I know the layout reasons google gives in their developer guide but I don't think I have seen a piece of code that really uses fragments that way. So why? I do like Android development though.

fractalwrench 10y ago
Gradle is just incredibly slow on Android compared to Eclipse. particularly with larger projects. Instant Run has helped alleviate this to some extent, but it's still not uncommon for a build to take 2+ minutes. I guess this is mostly due to all the resource crunching that Android does, and the fact that Android Studio doesn't perform incremental compilation by default. Another annoyance is that every time a minor change such as incrementing a version number is made, Android Studio grinds to a freeze syncing gradle files.
- distances 10y ago
  We are building a bit larger and more complex Android project, and every now and then just the Gradle part takes over 5 minutes for me. Just the Gradle syncing, before actually compiling anything. I think it's Gradle getting somehow into knots and taking a while to resolve everything -- I've got a very beefy computer so it's not about processing power. Gradle is just ridiculous.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Incremental compilation seems to be on for newest release of Gradle, but Android is still on 2.x due to the plugin. For our project, the most time consuming part is... Packaging. Making apk splits is slow, why does it zip the whole thing again if it is just replacing resources?
  - vardump 10y ago
    > why does it zip the whole thing again Maybe fragmented zip files with holes inside are undesired? Because that's what you get when modifying zip files in-place.
sehugg 10y ago
I've been often thwarted by Gradle's anything-goes syntax (everything is a Groovy program) and obfuscated error messages. Also the switch to Android Studio. Leave an app alone for a month and I can't compile it anymore.
rcarmo 10y ago
I tried to use gradle when I moved one of our apps to Android Studio for a few tweaks and updates - ended up using Ant and Visual Studio Code instead, such was the slowness and pain of the whole thing.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I started to think that Google employees on Android Studio team are using something like hexacore Xeons with 64 GB and 1TB SSD as their development machine.
  - rcarmo 10y ago
    Our app built just fine on a 2GB RAM machine with a 64GB SSD. Ironically, it was my repurposed Chromebook :)
Turbots 10y ago
Slow builds in eclipse (Ant or Maven) were caused by Eclipse, not by the build framework. Ant or Maven run very fast on commandline, compared to Gradle

fractalwrench 10y ago

Gradle is just incredibly slow on Android compared to Eclipse. particularly with larger projects. Instant Run has helped alleviate this to some extent, but it's still not uncommon for a build to take 2+ minutes. I guess this is mostly due to all the resource crunching that Android does, and the fact that Android Studio doesn't perform incremental compilation by default. Another annoyance is that every time a minor change such as incrementing a version number is made, Android Studio grinds to a freeze syncing gradle files.

distances 10y ago
We are building a bit larger and more complex Android project, and every now and then just the Gradle part takes over 5 minutes for me. Just the Gradle syncing, before actually compiling anything. I think it's Gradle getting somehow into knots and taking a while to resolve everything -- I've got a very beefy computer so it's not about processing power. Gradle is just ridiculous.
AstralStorm 10y ago
Incremental compilation seems to be on for newest release of Gradle, but Android is still on 2.x due to the plugin. For our project, the most time consuming part is... Packaging. Making apk splits is slow, why does it zip the whole thing again if it is just replacing resources?
- vardump 10y ago
  > why does it zip the whole thing again Maybe fragmented zip files with holes inside are undesired? Because that's what you get when modifying zip files in-place.

sehugg 10y ago

I've been often thwarted by Gradle's anything-goes syntax (everything is a Groovy program) and obfuscated error messages. Also the switch to Android Studio. Leave an app alone for a month and I can't compile it anymore.

rcarmo 10y ago

I tried to use gradle when I moved one of our apps to Android Studio for a few tweaks and updates - ended up using Ant and Visual Studio Code instead, such was the slowness and pain of the whole thing.

pjmlp 10y ago
I started to think that Google employees on Android Studio team are using something like hexacore Xeons with 64 GB and 1TB SSD as their development machine.
- rcarmo 10y ago
  Our app built just fine on a 2GB RAM machine with a 64GB SSD. Ironically, it was my repurposed Chromebook :)

Turbots 10y ago

Slow builds in eclipse (Ant or Maven) were caused by Eclipse, not by the build framework. Ant or Maven run very fast on commandline, compared to Gradle