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Apache Maven vs Pants: What are the differences?
Developers describe Apache Maven as "Apache build manager for Java projects". 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. On the other hand, Pants is detailed as "Build system by Twitter, Foursquare, and Square". Pants is a build system for Java, Scala and Python. It works particularly well for a source code repository that contains many distinct projects.
Apache Maven and Pants can be primarily classified as "Java Build" tools.
Some of the features offered by Apache Maven are:
- Simple project setup that follows best practices - get a new project or module started in seconds
- Consistent usage across all projects means no ramp up time for new developers coming onto a project
- Superior dependency management including automatic updating, dependency closures (also known as transitive dependencies)
On the other hand, Pants provides the following key features:
- Builds Java, Scala, and Python.
- Adding support for new languages is straightforward.
- Supports code generation: thrift, protocol buffers, custom code generators.
"Dependency management" is the top reason why over 125 developers like Apache Maven, while over 5 developers mention "Creates deployable packages" as the leading cause for choosing Pants.
Apache Maven and Pants are both open source tools. It seems that Apache Maven with 1.74K GitHub stars and 1.28K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Pants with 1.16K GitHub stars and 333 GitHub forks.
Pros of Apache Maven
- Dependency management136
- Necessary evil71
- I’d rather code my app, not my build60
- Publishing packaged artifacts48
- Convention over configuration43
- Modularisation18
- Consistency across builds11
- Prevents overengineering using scripting6
- Lot of cool plugins4
- Runs Tests4
- Extensible3
- Hard to customize2
- Runs on Linux2
- Runs on OS X1
- Slow incremental build1
- Inconsistent buillds1
- Undeterminisc1
- Good IDE tooling1
Pros of Pants
- Creates deployable packages6
- Runs on Linux4
- Runs on OS X4
- BUILD files4
- Runs tests4
- Scales4
- Flexibility2
- Extensible2
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Cons of Apache Maven
- Complex6
- Inconsistent buillds1
- Not many plugin-alternatives0
Cons of Pants
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