A Quick Comparison Between Grade and Maven

What is Maven?

Maven  is one of widly  used  for project build automation using Java. This will help you understand how certain software is built and what its various dependencies are.It uses XML files to describe the project  that you are building, depending on the software associated with third-party modules and components, the build sequence, and the necessary plugins .There are pre-defined targets for tasks such as packaging and compiling.
Maven genrally download libraries and plugins from  repositories and then puts them all in a cache on your local machine

What is Gradle?

In java for build Automation we have Gradle as a build tool  that is open source and uses the concepts like  Maven and  Ant. DSL (It uses domain-specific language) based on the programming language  like Groovy, differentiating it from Apache Maven, which uses XML for its project configuration. It was designed to support multi-project builds that are expected to be quite huge and also determines the order of tasks run by using a directed acyclic graph.

Gradle vs. Maven

Here only  few  fundamental differences in the way that the two systems approach builds.Gradle is based on the task dependency graph-where tasks are the content of the job-and Maven is based on fixed and linear model of phases.

In terms of performance, both allow multi-module builds to run in parallel. However, Gradle allows incremental builds because it checks which tasks have been updated. If this is the case, the task is not executed, which greatly reduces your build time. Other outstanding performance - eatures you can find on Gradle include:

-Incremental compilations for Java classes
-Compile avoidance for Java
-The use of APIs for incremental subtasks
-A compiler daemon, which also makes compilation faster

- Gradle, however, wins once it involves API and implementation dependencies, likewise as inherently permitting coinciding safe caches. It conjointly keeps repository information at the side of cached dependencies, making ensure that two or more projects using the same cache will not overwrite each other,, and it's a checksum-based cache and may synchronize cache with the repository. moreover, Gradle is compatible with common IVY metadata, permitting you to outline custom rules to specify a version for a dynamic dependency, and partitioning version conflicts. These are not available on Maven.

Code Examples -:

Here is  the code to create and compile, perform static analysis, run unit tests, and create JAR file build scripts.
below  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, we need to execute the following:

mvn package

It requires a lot of XML code to complete some basic and common tasks, therefore, the project in Maven has a lot of tasks and dependencies

For comparison, this is a build.gradle code example with similar results:

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'
}

The code is short and introduces some useful tasks not covered by the Maven code above. Run the following command on the task list that Gradle can run with the current configuration:

gradle tasks --all

How to Choose -:

Both tools have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Customized builds - We can easily define the metadata for our project and its dependencies, but creating a very custom architecture might be a nightmare for Maven users.

Dependency management and directory structure - Nevertheless, Maven provides simple and effective dependency management, and because it has a directory structure for projects, all projects have a certain standard layout. It uses a declarative XML file for its POM file and has many plug-ins that can be used. Gradle uses the directory structure you see on Maven, but you can customize it. It also uses the same format as GAV that Maven uses to identify artifacts.

Plugins and integrations - Maven also supports a variety of building life cycle stages and basically integrates with third-party tools such as CI servers, code covering components, artificial warehouse systems. Regarding plug-ins, the number of plug-ins now available is increasing, and Gradle is the leading vendor with compatible plug-ins. However, there are still more plugins available for Maven than the number available for grades.

Flexibility - On the other hand, Gradle is very flexible and script-based. The custom build will easily be completed on Gradle. However, since Gradle is actually a beginner, the number of developers who know Gradle from inside to outside may be limited.

Conclusion

At the end, what you choose will mainly depend on your needs. Gradle is more powerful. However, sometimes you do not need most of the features it provides. Maven may be the best choice for small projects, while Gradle is the best choice for large projects. If you have been using Maven, but find that your project is beyond its scope.

Thank you