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Gradle

A flexible build automation tool for the JVM.

Gradle uses a Groovy or Kotlin DSL to describe builds for Java, Kotlin, Android, C/C++, Scala, and other languages. It supports incremental builds, build caching (local and remote), parallel execution of tasks across multiple cores, and a large plugin ecosystem for everything from code generation to release publishing. Gradle is the official build system for Android Studio and the JetBrains IDEs.

The defining contrast with Maven is flexibility: Gradle's DSL lets project authors write arbitrary code in build files, which is powerful but can produce builds that are hard to understand. The Kotlin DSL (the now-recommended alternative to the original Groovy DSL) gives IDE auto-completion and type checking, which makes complex build logic considerably more manageable.

Gradle Inc. (formerly Gradleware) develops Gradle and offers a commercial Build Cache and Build Scan service. The open-source build tool itself is Apache-2.0. Gradle has the largest market share for new Android projects, growing share in JVM microservices, and is the canonical way to build Kotlin multiplatform projects.

Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install gradle
Fedora/RHEL:   sudo dnf install gradle
Arch:          sudo pacman -S gradle
macOS:         brew install gradle