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Both Maven and Gradle have plugins that will generate Eclipse and IntelliJ project files. But also, both Maven and Gradle work by first building up a model of

Both Maven and Gradle have plugins that will generate Eclipse and IntelliJ project files. But also, both Maven and Gradle work by first building up a model of what the build will look like, then executing it. Gradle is complicated by the fact that it's much easier to run custom code that modifies the build during the build (which is why I don't like it so much), but IDEs can still inspect the build model to work out what's going on.

flukus 9y ago
> Both Maven and Gradle have plugins that will generate Eclipse and IntelliJ project files. So does this work as I suggested? Can you do whatever you want in you're build script and output something usable for eclipse? > But also, both Maven and Gradle work by first building up a model of what the build will look like, then executing it Isn't that pretty much what make has always done? You define outputs and what dependencies are needed for those outputs and make will work out the path to get there.
- andrewaylett 9y ago
  Make works on a files in -> one file out basis, and the IDE has no visibility of any other side-effects. That works for build systems with that property, but some of the interesting bits of builds touch multiple files. It's also why I like Make and Maven and don't think Bash and Ant make suitable build tools. Maven and Gradle plugins also have the advantage that the IDE can be taught to understand what they do -- a Makefile can run a compiler, but the IDE can decide to use incremental compilation and update a debug target on-the-fly, as it can see what the project build is doing and replicate the results. On the subject of generating project files, pretty much everyone I know prefers to use the IDE's tooling for importing build files rather than the build tool's tooling for generating IDE files. And that's probably a self-reinforcing behaviour as far as tooling quality goes.

flukus 9y ago

> Both Maven and Gradle have plugins that will generate Eclipse and IntelliJ project files. So does this work as I suggested? Can you do whatever you want in you're build script and output something usable for eclipse? > But also, both Maven and Gradle work by first building up a model of what the build will look like, then executing it Isn't that pretty much what make has always done? You define outputs and what dependencies are needed for those outputs and make will work out the path to get there.

andrewaylett 9y ago
Make works on a files in -> one file out basis, and the IDE has no visibility of any other side-effects. That works for build systems with that property, but some of the interesting bits of builds touch multiple files. It's also why I like Make and Maven and don't think Bash and Ant make suitable build tools. Maven and Gradle plugins also have the advantage that the IDE can be taught to understand what they do -- a Makefile can run a compiler, but the IDE can decide to use incremental compilation and update a debug target on-the-fly, as it can see what the project build is doing and replicate the results. On the subject of generating project files, pretty much everyone I know prefers to use the IDE's tooling for importing build files rather than the build tool's tooling for generating IDE files. And that's probably a self-reinforcing behaviour as far as tooling quality goes.