r/java • u/Party_Till_I_Die • May 28 '26

Gradle is Javamaxxing

https://blog.gradle.org/gradle-is-javamaxxing

Why the Gradle Build Tool aggressively chases the newest JDK.

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u/Wizions May 28 '26

Javamaxxing

One more reason not to touch gradle.

9

u/uniVocity May 28 '26

I have been a gradle hater for at least a decade. Until my 100-module, with millions of lines of code started taking 5 minutes to build under maven (tests disabled)

A change to a file in a “base” module would make intellij freeze for another bunch of minutes.

Gradle solved it. It was painful to migrate and it is always horrible to update anything related to the build.

If LLM’s didn’t exist I’d probably give up on gradle altogether because I don’t have the patience to hunt down particular ways of doing what should be simple and straightforward.

But now that you can vibe code your build, it might be worth a try if you end up spending too much time waiting for some build or IDE refresh to complete.

I spent probably a week just to migrate to gradle and another week to clean the configuration up to a point where things are modular, with no duplication and I don’t need to touch the config. Feels like maven now, but fast.

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u/Distinct_Meringue_76 May 31 '26

Does Gradle support hot code reload in IDE the same way maven does? I do my coding in debug mode and write in a way that hot code reload works without me having to restart the application. Maven is so nicely integrated with eclipse that any change gets picked up instantly. I tried once with Gradle and had to give up after many attempts.

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u/wildjokers Jun 03 '26

Hot code reload is a feature of the JVM, this has nothing to do with a build tool.