Apache Maven vs Gradle

Likelihood to Recommend

Building and automating packaging of software can be a challenging task. As the complexity of the project grows so do the dependencies on third-party artifacts. Using Maven we can define and manage the project structure centrally and it helps improve overall build times.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Gradle is an ideal tool to build an application that is complex and/or distributed. It is well suited for builds that use a CI engine such as Jenkins or Bamboo, and a repository such as Artifactory.

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Dirce Richards

Sr. Software Engineer/Devops

KronosComputer Software, 1001-5000 employees

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Pros

Maven is useful in building Java applications.
Quick project setup, no complicated build.xml files, just a POM and go. Reduces the size of source distributions, because jars can be pulled from a central location.

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Verified User

Team Lead in Engineering

Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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It allows us to share configurations between machines and developers
It makes builds reproducible
It allows us to tweak how our server gets bundled and deployed

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David Tanner

Devops Engineer

Disaster Accountability ProjectNon-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees

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Cons

POM file in XML is quite messy, especially with a big project.
Dependency management with a local cache sometimes causes conflict.
Do not support scripting to add custom build commands.

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Hung Vu

Technical Leader

FPT SoftwareComputer Software, 10,001+ employees

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I'd like to see a way to specify how to run only certain tests in parallel, I tried this feature and for tests that involve interaction with SQL Databases sometimes I can't because of deadlocks.
Not sure if there is something else, gradle has been working really good for us and they are adding improvements all the time which is awesome. I used to think the performance is a deal but the latest versions are addressing this issue very well

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Performance

Apache Maven 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Excellent tool to build a project, simple and easy to study, install and implement.

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Hung Vu

Technical Leader

FPT SoftwareComputer Software, 10,001+ employees

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Gradle 3.0

Based on 1 answer

I have tried to use Gradle for projects several times in the past, but there is just so much work in maintaining the build file that it quickly becomes untenable. I have been using Maven for many years, and even though the build file can be complex, it works without maintenance between releases.

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David Tanner

Devops Engineer

Disaster Accountability ProjectNon-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Ant, Maven's opposing framework, is often a point of comparison. Although Ant does not require formal conventions, it is procedural in the sense that you must tell Ant exactly what to do and when. It also lacks a lifecycle, along with goal definition and dependencies. Maven, on the other hand, requires less work as it knows exactly where your source code is as long as the pom.xml file is generated.

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Verified User

Engineer in Product Management

Telecommunications Company, 10,001+ employees

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Maven is the most popular alternative to Gradle, in my opinion. I think that both have their advantages and disavantages so I would advise people to scan through the documentation and example applications of both tools and choose according to their needs and limitations.

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Gabriel Freire

Student at Instituto Superior Técnico

CiscoComputer Networking, 1001-5000 employees

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Return on Investment

The tool has greatly improved our overall software build times and had a positive impact on our release schedules.
Being a free application from an Open Source Community, there was no upfront investment needed on our part.

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