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Add to SafariWhen comparing Apache Maven vs Gradle, the Slant community recommends Gradle for most people. In the question“What are the best Java build automation tools?” Gradle is ranked 1st while Apache Maven is ranked 2nd. The most important reason people chose Gradle is:
Android Studio's build system is an Android plugin for Gradle. What's more is that the Android Gradle plugin can be installed and run even on machines that don't have Android Studio, which enables you to build Android apps everywhere (for example continuous integration servers).
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Declarative
Maven is very opinionated and declarative. This means that most developers will easily understand how your build system works. They don't have to guess which file will end up in the jar. An IDE can also import any project and easily reason how everything is organized and fits.
Pro IDE Support
Almost all of the most used Java IDEs have special support for Maven built in out of the box or through plugins available to download.
Pro Massive central repository
Maven's central repository is very large and extensive and holds almost every open source Java project out there.
Pro Popular
Apache Maven is very popular in the Open Source community. With many open source projects using it as their build tool of choice. Considering that the Open Source community is rather large and usually helpful so there are a lot of guides and tutorials out there written by third-party sources on Maven.
Pro Lots of plugins
The fact that it's open source and that it's very popular means that Maven has hundreds of open source plugins available.
Pro Clear configuration via XML
Maven uses XML as a configuration file format. This makes the configuration files very explicit, easy to parse and hard to mistype.
Pro Convention over configuration.
It's rather simple and works by convention. This also makes it easy to switch projects as the basic structure looks similar.
Pro Built-in Dependency Resolution
It saves lot's of time, even more when you know how to use it properly.
Pro Official Android Studio build tool
Android Studio's build system is an Android plugin for Gradle. What's more is that the Android Gradle plugin can be installed and run even on machines that don't have Android Studio, which enables you to build Android apps everywhere (for example continuous integration servers).
Pro Lots of plugins available
Gradle has hundreds of open source plugins available. This is extremely helpful for users who want to speed up their development.
Pro Dependency programming tool
Gradle is a dependency programming tool first and foremost. Gradle will make sure that all declared dependencies are properly executed for every random task that you execute in your setup. The code can be spread across many directories in any kind of file layout.
Pro Short scripts
Since Gradle does not use XML but it uses it's own DSL based on Groovy, Gradle scripts tend to be shorter than other build tools that use XML. Boilerplate code is also considerably small because it's DSL is designed to solve a specific problem: moving the software through its lifecycle starting from compilation into static analysis and testing, packaging and finally deployment.
Pro Integrates with Maven
Gradle can deploy to remote Maven repositories or even install to your local Maven repo.
Pro Built for continuous delivery
Gradle can be easily integrated with Jenkins to create a continuous delivery pipeline for any Java application.
Pro IDEA integration
Gradle has full integration with Jetbrains IDEA.
IDEA understands multi-module Gradle builds and automatically maintains the IDEA modules within the project.
You also have the option to run unit tests with either the built-in JUnit/TestNG test runner, or delegate running the test to Gradle using the same visualization as the built-in runner.
Pro Integration with Ant
Gradle integrates perfectly with Ant. Giving developers a lot of Ant's flexibility. You can run individual Ant tasks on Gradle or even entire Ant builds.
Pro Convention over configuration
Gradle follows the convention over configuration paradigm in order to make it easier for developers by having already made a number of decisions out of the box.
Pro Eclipse integration
Gradle has full integration with Eclipse through developer tools and plugins.
Cons
Con Verbose
Maven uses XML syntax for it's configuration file, which is very verbose and tends to get complicated quickly.
Con Scripting missing extension by plugin only
Some build automation would easily be achievable with a tiny bit of scripting. Regrettably, maven forces everything to happen within XML or a plugin.
Con Log output can be verbose / messy
The output is very messy/talkative with information normally irrelevant making it sometimes hard to identify the important pieces.
Con Intransparency (due to declarative model)
The purpose of the tooling is to take away work from the developer. This comes here at the cost of an intransparent realization regarding the internal implementation. While the model may be clear on what should happen, how that happens is less clear and thus in the rare case something does not work as expected it can be a bit hard to understand why at the beginning.
Con Difficult to customize
If you want to do everything The Maven Way, great. If you want or need to deviate from that, good luck.
Con Complex and fragile builds
Con Can get slow for large builds
Since Gradle uses Groovy instead of XML for it's configuration scripts, it achieves a great deal of flexibility but unfortunately that comes with slower builds when the project gets large enough. This is because the entire Groovy script has to be recompiled for every build instead of simply being parsed.
