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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Java Build Tools
  5. Gradle vs Mill

Gradle vs Mill

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Gradle
Gradle
Stacks24.3K
Followers9.8K
Votes254
GitHub Stars18.1K
Forks5.0K
Mill
Mill
Stacks3
Followers4
Votes0

Gradle vs Mill: What are the differences?

# Introduction 
In the world of build automation tools, Gradle and Mill are popular choices. Both tools provide robust features for managing and building projects efficiently. However, there are key differences between Gradle and Mill that developers should consider before choosing one for their projects.

1. **Build configuration**: Gradle uses Groovy or Kotlin DSL for build configuration, allowing developers to write build scripts with a more expressive syntax. On the other hand, Mill uses a Scala-based DSL for build configuration, which may appeal to developers familiar with Scala.

2. **Incremental compilation**: Gradle supports incremental compilation out of the box, which can significantly reduce build times by compiling only the necessary parts of the project. Mill also provides incremental compilation but leverages Zinc for better performance.

3. **Dependency management**: Gradle has a rich and mature ecosystem for dependency management with support for popular dependency management systems like Maven and Ivy. On the other hand, Mill has a simpler approach to dependency management, favoring the use of Scala's build tool ecosystem.

4. **Customizability**: Gradle offers extensive customizability through plugins and build script configurations, making it highly flexible for different project requirements. In contrast, Mill focuses on simplicity and ergonomics, providing fewer customization options but a more streamlined user experience.

5. **Community support**: Gradle has a large and active community with a wealth of resources, plugins, and support available. Mill, being a newer and less popular tool, may have a smaller community and fewer resources, leading to potential challenges in finding help and guidance.

6. **Performance**: Gradle has been known to have slower build times for larger projects compared to some other build tools. Mill, with its emphasis on performance and speed, aims to provide faster build times, especially for Scala projects.

In Summary, Gradle and Mill differ in their build configuration, incremental compilation, dependency management, customizability, community support, and performance characteristics, making them suitable for different project requirements and developer preferences.

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Detailed Comparison

Gradle
Gradle
Mill
Mill

Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. If you are building, testing, publishing, and deploying software on any platform, Gradle offers a flexible model that can support the entire development lifecycle from compiling and packaging code to publishing web sites.

It is your shiny new Java/Scala build tool. It aims for simplicity by re-using concepts you are already familiar with, borrowing ideas from modern tools like Bazel, to let you build your projects in a way that's simple, fast, and predictable.

Declarative builds and build-by-convention;Language for dependency based programming;Structure your build;Deep API;Gradle scales;Multi-project builds;Many ways to manage your dependencies;Gradle is the first build integration tool
Simple;Fast;Modern;Works with scala
Statistics
GitHub Stars
18.1K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
5.0K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
24.3K
Stacks
3
Followers
9.8K
Followers
4
Votes
254
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 110
    Flexibility
  • 51
    Easy to use
  • 47
    Groovy dsl
  • 22
    Slow build time
  • 10
    Crazy memory leaks
Cons
  • 8
    Inactionnable documentation
  • 6
    It is just the mess of Ant++
  • 4
    Hard to decide: ten or more ways to achieve one goal
  • 2
    Dependency on groovy
  • 2
    Bad Eclipse tooling
No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available
Docker
Docker
Java
Java
Scala
Scala
Windows
Windows
Mac OS X
Mac OS X
FreeBSD
FreeBSD
Arch Linux
Arch Linux

What are some alternatives to Gradle, Mill?

Apache Maven

Apache Maven

Maven allows a project to build using its project object model (POM) and a set of plugins that are shared by all projects using Maven, providing a uniform build system. Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build saving you immense amounts of time when trying to navigate many projects.

Bazel

Bazel

Bazel is a build tool that builds code quickly and reliably. It is used to build the majority of Google's software, and thus it has been designed to handle build problems present in Google's development environment.

Pants

Pants

Pants is a build system for Java, Scala and Python. It works particularly well for a source code repository that contains many distinct projects.

JitPack

JitPack

JitPack is an easy to use package repository for Gradle/Sbt and Maven projects. We build GitHub projects on demand and provides ready-to-use packages.

SBT

SBT

It is similar to Java's Maven and Ant. Its main features are: Native support for compiling Scala code and integrating with many Scala test frameworks.

Buck

Buck

Buck encourages the creation of small, reusable modules consisting of code and resources, and supports a variety of languages on many platforms.

Apache Ant

Apache Ant

Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like Make, without Make's wrinkles and with the full portability of pure Java code.

Please

Please

Please is a cross-language build system with an emphasis on high performance, extensibility and reproduceability. It supports a number of popular languages and can automate nearly any aspect of your build process.

CMake

CMake

It is used to control the software compilation process using simple platform and compiler independent configuration files, and generate native makefiles and workspaces that can be used in the compiler environment of the user's choice.

Sonatype Nexus

Sonatype Nexus

It is an open source repository that supports many artifact formats, including Docker, Java™ and npm. With the Nexus tool integration, pipelines in your toolchain can publish and retrieve versioned apps and their dependencies

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