Java Tech Popularity Index Q2/2023: Build Tools

Summary for Q2/2023

Here is the scorecard of Gradle (100%), not on the card, vs. Maven (left) and Ant (right). The arrows show the trend vs. Gradle.

Maven holds steady against Gradle except for Stack Overflow. Ant holds up surprisingly well in jobs for its age but has disappeared from searches and Stack Overflow.

Here are my recommendations:

• If you use Scala, then use sbt.
• Otherwise, if you absolutely cannot stand XML files and/or need to customize your build heavily, then use Gradle.
• Otherwise, use Maven.

Archive

Table Of Contents

• Summary for Q2/2023
• Archive
• Choices
• Popularity
  • Why Popularity - and How?
  • Employers: Job Ads
  • Developers
    • Students at Udemy
    • Google Searches
    • Questions at Stack Overflow
• Analysis

Choices

Here are the choices in alphabetical order:

• Ant
• Gradle
• Maven
• sbt

Popularity

Why Popularity - and How?

Picking a popular technology makes our developer life easier: Easier to learn, easier to build, debug & deploy, easier to find jobs/hire, and easier to convince teammates & bosses. Now popularity can make a difference in two situations: When multiple technologies score similarly, we could go for the most popular one. And when a technology is very unpopular, we may not use it.

I measure popularity among employers and developers as the trend between competing technologies. I count mentions in job ads at Indeed for employer popularity. For developer popularity, I use Google searches, Udemy course buyers, and Stack Overflow questions.

Employers: Job Ads

The Indeed job search is active in 62 countries. I picked 59 countries representing 69% of the worldwide GDP in 2022, excluding three countries because English word searches proved ineffective there: China, Japan, and South Korea. Job searches demonstrate the willingness of organizations to pay for a technology - the strongest indicator of popularity in my mind. Gradle is the baseline.

Maven wins, Gradle is second, Ant is third, and sbt is last. The number of developer ads is down in Q1/2023. Maven leads Gradle nearly 3:1, slightly growing since June 2022. Gradle dropped a lot over the last two months. That’s why bit Ant and sbt grew – before, Ant shrunk while sbt stayed steady.

Please see here for details, caveats, and adjustments to the job ad mentions.

You can find the detailed search results with links here. They include breakdowns by continents:

Developers

Students at Udemy

Udemy is one of the biggest online learning sites. They publish the number of people who bought a course (beyond a certain threshold, possibly around 100k). This shows how many people evaluate a technology.

Unfortunately, Udemy shows the number of students only for Maven (149k). That’s why there’s no chart here, as a comparison is impossible.

Here are the links that show the courses for all and the number of students for some:

• Ant
• Gradle
• Maven
• sbt

Google Searches

Google Trends demonstrates the initial interest in a technology over time. “More searches = better” to me (chart link).

Google changed its measurement algorithms on January 1, 2016, and January 1, 2022. That caused spikes for all values, especially in 2022.

Maven wins, Gradle is second, Ant is third, and sbt is last. Maven leads Gradle 2.4:1. Maven and Gradle have declined after Google changed its counting on January 1, 2022. Ant has declined by 98% in the last 19 years, while sbt has always had a comparatively low search volume.

Questions at Stack Overflow

We can run database queries against the questions, answers, and comments at Stack Overflow with the StackExchange Data Explorer. The number of questions is a proxy for using a technology during evaluation and productive use. “More questions = better” to me.

You can run the query below at the StackExchange Data Explorer:

DECLARE @StartDate DATE = '2009-01-01';
DECLARE @EndDate DATE = '2023-03-31';

WITH Tagged AS (
  SELECT
    Id,
    CreationDate,
    CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('<maven>', Tags) > 0 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS MavenTag,
    CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('<gradle>', Tags) > 0 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS GradleTag,
    CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('<ant>', Tags) > 0 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS AntTag,
    CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('<sbt>', Tags) > 0 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS sbtTag
  FROM Posts
  WHERE
    PostTypeId = 1 AND -- 1 for 
    CreationDate >= @StartDate AND
    CreationDate <= @EndDate
),
MonthlyCounts AS (
  SELECT
    DATEADD(month, DATEDIFF(month, 0, CreationDate), 0) AS Month,
    SUM(MavenTag) AS Maven,
    SUM(GradleTag) AS Gradle,
    SUM(AntTag) AS Ant,
    SUM(sbtTag) AS sbt
  FROM Tagged
  GROUP BY DATEADD(month, DATEDIFF(month, 0, CreationDate), 0)
)
SELECT
  Month,
  Maven,
  Gradle,
  Ant,
  sbt
FROM MonthlyCounts
ORDER BY Month;

Gradle wins, Maven is second, sbt is third, and Ant is last. Maven and Gradle are neck-to-neck, but this time Gradle is ahead. Gradle is at 75% of its 2016 peak, and Maven is at 40% of its 2015 high. Ant and sbt are behind by more than an order of magnitude.

Analysis

• Maven dominates Java build tools with 2.5 times the values of Gradle, except for Stack Overflow. It’s the default build system in the Java world. And unlike Gradle, few things break from release to release. Developers like that stability! Its verbose XML files are a minus for some. And creating custom build tasks is more complicated than in Gradle: You write a Java class and distribute the task alongside your build file.
• Gradle is the runner-up in Java build tools. It’s faster than Maven and has much smaller build files, which can be either in Groovy or Kotlin. Creating custom build tasks is easy: We just add a method in the build file. Unfortunately, more things break from release to release than in Maven. That can be annoying!
• Ant is the granddaddy of Java build tools: Its first release was in July 2000. Unlike other granddaddies, it’s still active: Its job ad mentions are 55% of Gradle’s. There are probably a ton of legacy projects using Ant. But we shouldn’t use it on new projects – Maven and Gradle are much better options.
• sbt is the odd man out here: It’s mainly used for Scala projects. The build files are also written in Scala.

So here’s my recommendation:

• If you use Scala, then use sbt.
• Otherwise, if you absolutely cannot stand XML files and/or need to customize your build heavily, then use Gradle.
• Otherwise, use Maven.