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Why use Maven when there is Gradle?

by Twirrim 10y ago

bluejekyll 10y ago
Maven is declaritive. IMO it's the best of the Java build tools. Gradle is not declaritive, unless it's changed since the last time I looked at it. Maven has problems. It's not perfect by any means. I would love to see it rewritten, get rid of the verbose XML which makes viewing dependencies hard and fix the craziness around generated code. Honestly, I'm tempted to make a fork of Cargo for Java, it's nearly perfect. But this goes against my opinion that build tools should be in the same language as the code they build.
- blktiger 10y ago
  Generally speaking gradle plugins take a very declarative syntax. Yes, it's easy to write non-declarative builds in Gradle, but that's what is awesome about it. Start with fully declarative builds, then add in non-declarative tasks if/when you need them.
  - perrylaj 10y ago
    My experience generally mirrors what you state. I transitioned a fairly significant code base & complex deployment process from a mix of maven and ant to gradle. I found Gradle's 'opinionated but flexible' approach to strike a good balance. It's definitely more complex, at least in our build, simply because of the size and scope of our project which has a wide variety of inter-dependencies which makes for a very complex task graph to build. But, the parallelism results in a far faster build/deploy cycle which is a worthy tradeoff. We initially planned on going full maven, but its strict lifecycle and plugin system was simply too rigid. Beyond that, XML makes for some verbose configuration for even simple things. We ended up developing our own Gradle plugins in static groovy and java, but it's very easy to do small bits/tests based on scripts and migrate functionality into specific-purpose plugins. Using Gradle was especially fortuitous when it came time to implement new areas of the product that relied on npm/node and webpack for front-end resource assembly. Gradle hasn't been without its own minor growing pains (early lack of tooling support, rapid version changes), and it's certainly possible to create a big complex mess if you script everything ala ant -- but it's also possible to create very nicely defined DSLs and build systems that are expressive in use. Our onboarding got significantly easier in switching to gradle from maven+ant, and teams can now easily make minor tweaks for their build needs without having to learn maven's plugin architecture. Builds, just like anything else, benefit from some best practices. I have no issue with Maven, but I won't start a new project with it.
    - vroombaprime 10y ago
      Everything you said matches my experiences - the complexity has to be watched closely, but otherwise it's a huge boon.
- koolba 10y ago
  > Honestly, I'm tempted to make a fork of Cargo for Java, it's nearly perfect. But this goes against my opinion that build tools should be in the same language as the code they build. The problem with that is that it doesn't work with slow / compiled languages. That's the worse thing about Maven (tied with the insane unnecessary complexity of the plugin architecture). The dev cycle for trying out a new plugin is atrocious. Compare that to editing a local copy of a Python, Ruby, or Groovy script.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    I have spent one year taking part in a multi-team project to fix a build system, because everyone made their own little changes in Ant. A chaos in a three site distributed system, with around 300 developers at its peak. In this regard, Gradle is even worse than Ant in what concerns keeping a build infrastructure clean.
    - perrylaj 10y ago
      Oddly enough, my experience was quite opposite of yours, but it sounds like the scope of your system might be a little larger than ours. The key to cleanliness (from my perspective) was to create versioned plugins for any build functionality that was required in more than one subproject. This simple rule prevents spaghetti task dependencies and maintains sanity for everyone. It gives us the best of both worlds -- a little bit of flexibility when needed for one-offs, but then a well defined DSL via plugins for anything that is done more frequently.
  - vorg 10y ago
    Gradle since version 3.0 provides Kotlin as well as Apache Groovy for writing build scripts.
- MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
  I tend to agree. Gradle can be nice if you have a talented team, but in the hand of mediocre developers, its opening the box of pandora. I have seen build files you people wouldn't believe. And unfortunately, all that code will not be lost in time like tears in rain.
pjmlp 10y ago
Because I happen to like XML and Grandle is painful slow, requires tricks like a background daemon to cache build related information. Also Maven is a project format in NetBeans. Just need to open it and its goals are mapped to IDE actions.
- snuxoll 10y ago
  Maven in general is widely workable in almost any of the major Java IDE's out there, even with all the work Jetbrains has put into Gradle support it's still not up to par with what they've done for Maven (and considering how hard it is to introspect Gradle builds it may never be). I feel like most people just hate Maven because of XML, if that's your problem then just use YAML (you can do that now). The other group seems to dislike that everything in Maven is done with plugins; I can understand this, there's no easy escape-hatch to do something no-declarative, but writing a Mojo isn't that much harder than putting some random task in your Gradle build.
  - suresk 10y ago
    > I feel like most people just hate Maven because of XML I see this a lot. I definitely don't want to go back to the days of J2EE/Hibernate XML hell, but there are places where XML isn't terrible, and Maven feels like one of them - it is easier to figure out context when in bigger files (as opposed to JSON and the like), and it is nice that you can get very easy/quick feedback about the structure of the document via XSD. But when I ask people why they hate Maven, they give some handy-wavy "but XML..." argument about it. I understand some of the more valid knocks against Maven, and there has been a time or two where I've been frustrated with it, but most of the time I used it (and I used it over a period of 8 years or so), I've been happy with it. I know that tools like Gradle and SBT allow you to do more, but I've always come away frustrated when using those tools.
    - vroombaprime 10y ago
      Things I love having in gradle: * custom tasks AND up-to-date checks for them (for when you invariably need special tasks like custom generated code, filtering only some resources in a certain way, calling other build systems like grunt/gulp, etc) * up-to-date checks in general * better task exclusions * better dependency version resolution abilities, including custom strategies * groovy syntax Things I think maven does better that matter to me: * classifier handling (it is really frustrating gradle still has a lot of messed up handling of them) * way less magic is possible in the buildscript - makes it easier to trace through End result: I could never go back to maven, every single project I've worked on has desired custom tasks and maven just makes it painful every step of the way. The only thing I worry about in gradle is making things easy to understand so someone else can follow behind - can't use too much magic.

Why use Maven when there is Gradle?

by Twirrim 10y ago

Why use Maven when there is Gradle?

Maven is declaritive. IMO it's the best of the Java build tools. Gradle is not declaritive, unless it's changed since the last time I looked at it. Maven has problems. It's not perfect by any means. I would love to see it rewritten, get rid of the verbose XML which makes viewing dependencies hard and fix the craziness around generated code. Honestly, I'm tempted to make a fork of Cargo for Java, it's nearly perfect. But this goes against my opinion that build tools should be in the same language as the code they build.

blktiger 10y ago
Generally speaking gradle plugins take a very declarative syntax. Yes, it's easy to write non-declarative builds in Gradle, but that's what is awesome about it. Start with fully declarative builds, then add in non-declarative tasks if/when you need them.
- perrylaj 10y ago
  My experience generally mirrors what you state. I transitioned a fairly significant code base & complex deployment process from a mix of maven and ant to gradle. I found Gradle's 'opinionated but flexible' approach to strike a good balance. It's definitely more complex, at least in our build, simply because of the size and scope of our project which has a wide variety of inter-dependencies which makes for a very complex task graph to build. But, the parallelism results in a far faster build/deploy cycle which is a worthy tradeoff. We initially planned on going full maven, but its strict lifecycle and plugin system was simply too rigid. Beyond that, XML makes for some verbose configuration for even simple things. We ended up developing our own Gradle plugins in static groovy and java, but it's very easy to do small bits/tests based on scripts and migrate functionality into specific-purpose plugins. Using Gradle was especially fortuitous when it came time to implement new areas of the product that relied on npm/node and webpack for front-end resource assembly. Gradle hasn't been without its own minor growing pains (early lack of tooling support, rapid version changes), and it's certainly possible to create a big complex mess if you script everything ala ant -- but it's also possible to create very nicely defined DSLs and build systems that are expressive in use. Our onboarding got significantly easier in switching to gradle from maven+ant, and teams can now easily make minor tweaks for their build needs without having to learn maven's plugin architecture. Builds, just like anything else, benefit from some best practices. I have no issue with Maven, but I won't start a new project with it.
  - vroombaprime 10y ago
    Everything you said matches my experiences - the complexity has to be watched closely, but otherwise it's a huge boon.
koolba 10y ago
> Honestly, I'm tempted to make a fork of Cargo for Java, it's nearly perfect. But this goes against my opinion that build tools should be in the same language as the code they build. The problem with that is that it doesn't work with slow / compiled languages. That's the worse thing about Maven (tied with the insane unnecessary complexity of the plugin architecture). The dev cycle for trying out a new plugin is atrocious. Compare that to editing a local copy of a Python, Ruby, or Groovy script.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I have spent one year taking part in a multi-team project to fix a build system, because everyone made their own little changes in Ant. A chaos in a three site distributed system, with around 300 developers at its peak. In this regard, Gradle is even worse than Ant in what concerns keeping a build infrastructure clean.
  - perrylaj 10y ago
    Oddly enough, my experience was quite opposite of yours, but it sounds like the scope of your system might be a little larger than ours. The key to cleanliness (from my perspective) was to create versioned plugins for any build functionality that was required in more than one subproject. This simple rule prevents spaghetti task dependencies and maintains sanity for everyone. It gives us the best of both worlds -- a little bit of flexibility when needed for one-offs, but then a well defined DSL via plugins for anything that is done more frequently.
- vorg 10y ago
  Gradle since version 3.0 provides Kotlin as well as Apache Groovy for writing build scripts.
MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
I tend to agree. Gradle can be nice if you have a talented team, but in the hand of mediocre developers, its opening the box of pandora. I have seen build files you people wouldn't believe. And unfortunately, all that code will not be lost in time like tears in rain.

pjmlp 10y ago

Because I happen to like XML and Grandle is painful slow, requires tricks like a background daemon to cache build related information. Also Maven is a project format in NetBeans. Just need to open it and its goals are mapped to IDE actions.

snuxoll 10y ago
Maven in general is widely workable in almost any of the major Java IDE's out there, even with all the work Jetbrains has put into Gradle support it's still not up to par with what they've done for Maven (and considering how hard it is to introspect Gradle builds it may never be). I feel like most people just hate Maven because of XML, if that's your problem then just use YAML (you can do that now). The other group seems to dislike that everything in Maven is done with plugins; I can understand this, there's no easy escape-hatch to do something no-declarative, but writing a Mojo isn't that much harder than putting some random task in your Gradle build.
- suresk 10y ago
  > I feel like most people just hate Maven because of XML I see this a lot. I definitely don't want to go back to the days of J2EE/Hibernate XML hell, but there are places where XML isn't terrible, and Maven feels like one of them - it is easier to figure out context when in bigger files (as opposed to JSON and the like), and it is nice that you can get very easy/quick feedback about the structure of the document via XSD. But when I ask people why they hate Maven, they give some handy-wavy "but XML..." argument about it. I understand some of the more valid knocks against Maven, and there has been a time or two where I've been frustrated with it, but most of the time I used it (and I used it over a period of 8 years or so), I've been happy with it. I know that tools like Gradle and SBT allow you to do more, but I've always come away frustrated when using those tools.
  - vroombaprime 10y ago
    Things I love having in gradle: * custom tasks AND up-to-date checks for them (for when you invariably need special tasks like custom generated code, filtering only some resources in a certain way, calling other build systems like grunt/gulp, etc) * up-to-date checks in general * better task exclusions * better dependency version resolution abilities, including custom strategies * groovy syntax Things I think maven does better that matter to me: * classifier handling (it is really frustrating gradle still has a lot of messed up handling of them) * way less magic is possible in the buildscript - makes it easier to trace through End result: I could never go back to maven, every single project I've worked on has desired custom tasks and maven just makes it painful every step of the way. The only thing I worry about in gradle is making things easy to understand so someone else can follow behind - can't use too much magic.