Gradle vs. Maven: Performance, Compatibility, Builds, & More

Gradle is one of several Java development tools featured in Stackify’s Comprehensive Java Developer’s Guide, but it’s not the only build automation tool to consider. Maven is an older and commonly used alternative, but which build system is best for your project? With other tools, such as Spring, allowing developers to choose between the two systems, coupled with an increasing number of integrations for both, the decision is largely up to you.

The size of your project, your need for customization, and a few other variables can help you choose. Let’s take a look.

What is Gradle?

Gradle is a build automation system that is fully open source and uses the concepts you see on Apache Maven and Apache Ant. It uses domain-specific language based on the programming language Groovy, differentiating it from Apache Maven, which uses XML for its project configuration. It also determines the order of tasks run by using a directed acyclic graph.

Developers first introduced Gradle in 2007, and by 2013, Google had adopted it as the build system for Android projects. Designed to support substantial multi-project builds, Gradle also enables incremental additions to your build, identifying updated parts of your project. This feature prevents the re-execution of tasks dependent on updated parts. As of now, the most recent stable release, version 3.4, launched in February 2017, facilitates development and deployment using Java, Scala, and Groovy, with the promise of incorporating other project workflows and languages in the future.

What is Maven?

Maven will download libraries and plugins from the different repositories and then puts them all in a cache on your local machine. While predominantly used for Java projects, you can use it for Scala, Ruby, and C#, as well as a host of other languages.

Code Examples

In a comparison of Ant, Gradle, and Maven, Naresh Joshi compares the code required to create a build script that compiles, performs static analysis, runs unit tests, and creates JAR files at Programming Mitra.

Maven Code Example

Here’s the code required to achieve this with Maven:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">

<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.programming.mitra</groupId>
<artifactId>java-build-tools</artifactId>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<version>1.0</version>

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>junit</groupId>
<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
<version>4.11</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3.2</version>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>

To run the Maven goal that creates the JAR file, you would execute the following:

mvn package

Note that by using this code, you’re setting the parameters but not specifying the tasks that must be carried out. You can add plugins (such as Maven CheckStyle, FindBugs, and PMD) to execute the static analysis as a single target together with unit tests, but you’ll want to specify the path to the customs check style configuration to ensure that it fails on error, using code such as:

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.12.1</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<configuration>
<configLocation>config/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml</configLocation>
<consoleOutput>true</consoleOutput>
<failsOnError>true</failsOnError>
</configuration>
<goals>
<goal>check</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>findbugs-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.5.4</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>check</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-pmd-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>check</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

To run the goal to achieve this, execute the following:

mvn verify

It requires quite a bit of XML code to achieve some basic and common tasks, and for this reason, projects in Maven with a large number of tasks and dependencies can result in pom.xml files that consist of hundreds to thousands of lines of code.

Gradle Code Example

To compare, here’s an example of build.gradle code that achieves a similar outcome:

apply plugin:'java'
apply plugin:'checkstyle'
apply plugin:'findbugs'
apply plugin:'pmd'

version ='1.0'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    testCompile group:'junit', name:'junit', version:'4.11'
}

This code is shorter and also introduces some useful tasks that aren’t covered with the Maven code above. Execute the following for a list of tasks that Gradle can run with the current configuration:

gradle tasks --all

How to Choose

Overall, both tools have their respective strengths and weaknesses.

• Customized builds. With Maven, you can easily define your project’s metadata and dependencies, but creating a highly customized build might be a nightmare for Maven users. The POM file can easily get bloated as your project grows and might as well be an unreadable XML file later on.
• Dependency management and directory structure. Still, Maven provides simple yet effective dependency management, and since it has a directory structure for your projects, you have some sort of standard layout for all your projects. It uses a declarative XML file for its POM file and has a host of plugins that you can use. Gradle uses the directory structure you see on Maven, but this can be customized.
• Plugins and integrations. Maven also supports a wide variety of build life-cycle steps and integrates seamlessly with third-party tools such as CI servers, code coverage plugins, and artifact repository systems, among others. As far as plugins go, there is a growing number of available plugins now, and there are large vendors that have Gradle-compatible plugins. However, there are still more available plugins for Maven compared to the number available for Gradle.
• Flexibility. Gradle, on the other hand, is very flexible and is based on a script. Custom builds would be easy to do on Gradle. However, the number of developers who know Gradle inside-out might be limited because Gradle is virtually a newcomer.

In the end, what you choose will depend primarily on what you need. Gradle is more powerful.  However, there are times when you really do not need most of the features and functionalities it offers. Maven might be best for small projects, while Gradle is best for bigger projects.

Additional Resources and Tutorials on Gradle and Maven

For further reading and more information, including helpful tutorials, visit the following resources:

• The Gradle build system- Tutorial
• Getting Started With Gradle
• Maven in 5 Minutes
• Maven for building Java applications – Tutorial
• Maven Tutorial

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