Rocking the Gradle

What is Build Automation?

Build Automation is the process of automating the creation of a software build and the associated process including compiling computer source code into binary code, packaging binary code, and running automated tests.

What is Gradle?

Gradle is an open-source build automation tool that is designed to be flexible enough to build almost any type of software. Some features that make Gradle unique are its high performance, JVM foundation, conventions you can override, and extensibility.

Gradle is a general-purpose build tool that allows you to build any software. Its core models are based on tasks that get wired together based on their dependencies. Gradle then determines which tasks need to run in which order and executes them accordingly. Gradle evaluates and builds scripts in three phases. Initialization (Sets up the environment for the build), Configuration (Constructs and configures the task graph for the build), and Execution (Runs the tasks selected at the end of the configuration phase).

Gradle vs The World

There are many different build tools for Java such as Ant and Maven, as well as different build tools for different languages such as NPM for JavaScript and PyBuilder for Python. Let's compare Gradle to its biggest competitor.

Gradle vs Maven

One of the key differences between the two is performance. Gradle uses Incrementality to avoid work by tracking input and output tasks, running only what is necessary. It uses Build Cache to reuse the build outputs of any other Gradle build with the same inputs. Lastly, Gradel Daemon keeps build information fresh in memory. This results in a build time that is about 50% faster than using Maven.

Another key difference is the flexibility the tools offer. Gradle is modeled in an extensible way. This allows it to be used in native development and can be expanded to cover any ecosystem. Maven also provides convention over configuration but its model is very strict. This makes for tedious and difficult customization.

Gradle in the Real World

I'm sure you have heard of the streaming giant Netflix. Netflix uses Gradle to manage performance and maintenance. Netflix uses Build Scan on Gradle to find performance issues across multiple projects. It helps them find which of the plugins cause slowdowns on builds. Using Build Scan they also get more details on plugin versions as well as errors, the execution environment, dependency classpaths, and other useful information. This is helpful to troubleshoot issues quickly. Netflix also added Deprecation Warnings to their builds. It's helpful to see when plugins start deprecating things and gives a great way to understand our ecosystem and prioritize migrations accordingly.

All in all, Gradle helps improve the quality of builds and the quality of lives for developers.