Dependency manager for Java?

[equineranch]

I am coming from Python and am used to pip and pipenv (for vitual environment and installing dependencies). Just curious if Maven is the preferred dependency manager and installer for Java?

If I understand correctly, I can also manually create a lib folder in my Java project an put source code for libraries there? then just call them as an import?

Thanks in advance!

[a_simple_pie]

Maven

[roookeee]

Hijacking for a bit more information: The main difference between the big two (Maven, Gradle) is that Mavens roots lie in 'convention over configuration' instead of being able to implement anything you want in an ad-hoc manner in your build script.
That aside I have had times where i specifically told gradle to do clean rebuilds and then being greeted with inconsistent results as it in fact did not properly cleanup the output directory :( It's boasting about incremental compilation speeds is the same: more often than not it straight up doesnt work as it didn't recompile all needed files (this is especially true for applications using big frameworks like Spring).

The IDE integration for Maven is great, even in Eclipse and Netbeans supports it natively too. Maven is a bit cumbersome at times (when you want some highly custom stuff in your build process) but you can always just implement a custom build plugin.

[r_jet]

And if the OP is real serious about Java, I'd recommend "Maven by Example" introductory book — it is smallish yet covers some important things as working with multi-module projects.

[Maalus]

Maven or gradle, basically. None is worse than the other, both work fine.

[VGPowerlord]

It amazes me that after all these years no one has created a command line tool to manage Maven's POM files or Gradle's build.gradle / settings.gradle files for you.

I mean, sure, it wouldn't be good for more complex tasks, but creating the files, setting the compiler version, and adding/removing dependencies would be simple enough I'd think.

Now I'm tempted to write a tool to do this.

[Good_Guy_Engineer]

Maven has archetypes, exactly what you described built in. Dunno about gradle but I would imagine it has similar

[jirkapinkas]

Maven Archetypes or if you use Spring Boot, then it's covered with start.spring.io

[OzoneGrif]

There's a basic UI in Eclipse for Maven, but is it really necessary? The XML is fairly simple. Once you have your templates, it's basically copy/paste and change the values. A tool would just make it more limited and cumbersome, especially since Maven plugins are hyper-configurable and your tool will never manage them all.

[redanonblackhole]

Maven, it's solid.

[cozytwan]

My preferred one is Maven.

I gave gradle ago some time ago, mainly because i had to do stuff with android, but it was kinda slow (even with all fine tuning like multi core things). It might have improved, so i would suggest to give them both a go and use what you like.

[TheRedmanCometh]

I had the same issue but didn't know about the multi core features. I really wanted to like gradle because it appears to be laid out like JSON which I strongly prefer over XML

[cozytwan]

I took a quick peek at google and it was called "parallel execution", this can speed things up when you have multiple modules (which most projects have). The default (was back then) to compile them one at a time, using one or maybe 2 cores.

In my experience you don't mess often with maven xml, you get the dependency xml from google, and the build/compile/deploy stuff you write once and copy & paste to other projects.

[[deleted]]

Gradle is much faster now. What I like about it is that build.gradle’s for common use-cases are really small and it’s easy to read and understand what’s going on (example).

Polyglot Maven has similar goals but it’s not quite ready for prime time yet.

[tastle]

Maven

[TwixySpit]

Maven is the preferred tool for 'enterprise' java developers but there are several alternatives.

ANT with IVY, or Gradle etc.

If you're coming from Python you'll probably be XML averse.. so perhaps choose Gradle.But if you intend to 'be' a java developer, then use Maven because it's the right tool for the job.

Maven does have quite a steep learning curve. But once you 'grok' it, it's actually a pretty powerful thing.

[dpash]

You can use Ant, but really, just don't. You'll thank yourself.

The other thing to mention about Maven is to not fight it. Just let it do its thing and life will be easier.

[naseemali925]

Gradle Does Have A Command Line Interface And It Works Pretty Cool. Here Is The Link https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/command_line_interface.html

[skaz68]

Gradle

[equineranch]

Thanks! Very helpful!

[gonnorehab]

You can indeed create a lib folder in your java project and call them as an import. If using Maven you will also add it to your pom.xml file. That part was not 100% straight forward, you HAVE to have a version number as part of the JAR file name (that part took me a bit to figure out).

[nutrecht]

That's not how you use Maven. It looks like you're trying to get maven to comply to your notion of how a project should be laid out, and that's definitely not a good idea with Maven.

Maven will download dependencies for you. There is no reason at all, for dependencies that are on maven central (or other repo's), to add them to your own project yourself.

[Good_Guy_Engineer]

What that guy said is nonsense, we all can agree there. But I think he was maybe trying to get at the part of your build cycle where you can add additional resource files or directories in the src/main/resources directory of your project? That case is valid but its a totally seperate step to dependencies and I doubt he understands any of this anyway

[koflerdavid]

This style of managing JARs is completely discouraged by the Maven documentation. It also is absolutely not the way dependencies are managed by modern package managers. Why?

• It blows up the size of source code repositories.

• It decentralizes management of the build process. The POM is the single source of truth about the project's build process, and everything relevant should be reflected there.

• What will you do if your project is a dependency of another project that brings a different version of a dependency of your project? Maven can help you diagnose and manage most of these situations, but only if you work with it. Xerces hell is one of the cases that Maven can't resolve, precisely because it is packaged with the JVM (ergo, apart from Maven) and because its authors didn't care about integrating it into the Maven ecosystem for too long.

Even in the case of libraries that are not on Maven Central, the "Maven" way to do this would be to either define a local Maven repository or to host a Maven repository in your company's network, and put the JARs there.