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Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

mill-build.org

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Re: Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

#11

Post by user1241320 »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #5
potamic wrote: post #4

What tends to be complex about build requirements that necessitates special purpose tools? Golang seems to be doing fine with just go build and go test. What else are people doing with gradle/maven that requires static typing, DAGs, plugins etc.?

I'm working on a project that encompasses both JVM (Gradle, Kotlin) and Golang. My hot take: JVM build tools, especially Gradle, are a soup of unnecessary complexity, and people working in that ecosystem have Stockholm Syndrome. In Golang, I spend about 99% of my time dealing with code. In JVM land, I'm spending 30% just dealing with the build system. It's actually insane, and the community at large thinks this is no…

One note from having worked with both that I don’t see mentioned: Golang dependencies are sources you basically pull and compile with your own code. In JVM-land dependencies are precompliled packages (jars). This adds one little step.

Re: Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

#12

Post by fabioz »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #7

It's not clear to me how this is better than Gradle. And I hate Gradle. At first glance, Mill looks like it has many of the pitfalls of Gradle: - Plugins: Creates the temptation to rely on plugins for everything, and suddenly you're in plugin dependency hell with no idea how anything actually works. - Build scripts written in a DSL on top of a new language: Now I have to learn Scala and your DSL. I don't want to do e…

The first advantage the homepage lists is:

> Mill can build the same Java codebase 5-10x faster than Maven, or 2-4x faster than Gradle

Speed per se can be a good selling point (having to wait for slow builds is really annoying).

I can't really comment on anything else though as I just stumbled upon it here in HN ;)

Re: Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

#13

Post by cryptos »

The comparision with Gradle is not up to date. There is stated that you would end up in an untyped mess of Groovy build files, but statically typed Kotlin files are the default for quite some time now in Gradle! https://mill-build.org/mill/0.12.1/comparisons/gradle.html

Re: Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

#14

Post by cryptos »

rykad wrote: post #10
potamic wrote: post #4

What tends to be complex about build requirements that necessitates special purpose tools? Golang seems to be doing fine with just go build and go test. What else are people doing with gradle/maven that requires static typing, DAGs, plugins etc.?

To be blunt, nothing. The issue is that most people in jvm land are on a closed bubble and haven't seen anything else. This is true for build systems as is for non OO design for example. Most simply don't know better and the rest of us are simply stuck. Ant and then Maven started simple enough but people always find a way to justify adding more stuff. Gradle already started complex enough and they keep adding more st…

You have to keep in mind that Gradle Inc. earns money by providing consulting for complex builds. An easy build tool would destroy this business model ;-)

Re: Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

#15

Post by cryptos »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #5
potamic wrote: post #4

What tends to be complex about build requirements that necessitates special purpose tools? Golang seems to be doing fine with just go build and go test. What else are people doing with gradle/maven that requires static typing, DAGs, plugins etc.?

I'm working on a project that encompasses both JVM (Gradle, Kotlin) and Golang. My hot take: JVM build tools, especially Gradle, are a soup of unnecessary complexity, and people working in that ecosystem have Stockholm Syndrome. In Golang, I spend about 99% of my time dealing with code. In JVM land, I'm spending 30% just dealing with the build system. It's actually insane, and the community at large thinks this is no…

You speak from my soul! I'm in the Java world for a really long time now and I'm wondering for years why the build tools need to be so complicated an annoying. I know Go, Node.js and bit of Rust and all have more pleasant easier to use build tools! The JVM (or GraalVM) as an ecosystem is just fine and probably one of the best, but build tools might be achille's heel. Maybe it would be a good idea for Oracle to invest into that area ...

Re: Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

#16

Post by iainmerrick »

fabioz wrote: post #12
iamcalledrob wrote: post #7

It's not clear to me how this is better than Gradle. And I hate Gradle. At first glance, Mill looks like it has many of the pitfalls of Gradle: - Plugins: Creates the temptation to rely on plugins for everything, and suddenly you're in plugin dependency hell with no idea how anything actually works. - Build scripts written in a DSL on top of a new language: Now I have to learn Scala and your DSL. I don't want to do e…

The first advantage the homepage lists is: > Mill can build the same Java codebase 5-10x faster than Maven, or 2-4x faster than Gradle Speed per se can be a good selling point (having to wait for slow builds is really annoying). I can't really comment on anything else though as I just stumbled upon it here in HN ;)

The goal should be more like 50x faster than Gradle. Gradle is ludicrously slow (at least in every single Gradle project I’ve had to work with).

Re: Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

#17

Post by iainmerrick »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #9
threeseed wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the community at large thinks this is normal Half are ignorant. Other half are like me and just stuck with no options. But the tooling ecosystem on the JVM truly is horrific.

I think there are a lot of "JVM Lifers" who are so deep in the ecosystem they are unaware how much better things can be. Anecdote: I wanted to publish a ~100LoC multiplatform Kotlin library -- just some bindings. I publish these sorts of things for Go with just a "git push". Steps were: 1. Spend a few hours trying to understand Maven Central/Sonotype, register and get "verified". They're in the middle of some kind of…

I’d just like to add, NPM gets a lot of flak (mostly deservedly) but it too is still vastly easier than anything in the JVM ecosystem.

Even with all the headaches around modules versus CJS, and JS versus TypeScript, NPM is a lot easier than Gradle. Notably, you have a choice of alternate tools (eg pnpm, yarn, bun) that interoperate pretty well.

I guess my point is, Gradle and Maven are specifically and outstandingly bad.

Re: Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

#18

Post by dikei »

potamic wrote: post #4

What tends to be complex about build requirements that necessitates special purpose tools? Golang seems to be doing fine with just go build and go test. What else are people doing with gradle/maven that requires static typing, DAGs, plugins etc.?

In JVM world, the de factor equivalent to `go build` and `go test` are `mvn compile` and `mvn test`, which works 99% percent of the time.

Other build tools and plugins just compete/fill in for:

* improved build speed / test speed: using background daemon to reduce strtup speed, intelligent caching / task reordering to avoid redoing, etc..

* extra functionalities like code generation, publishing or deployments. As code generation is really big in JVM world, and there are many ways to deploy an application: jar + libs in a zip file, uber jars, container image, etc...

Re: Mill: A fast JVM build tool for Java and Scala

#20

Post by dikei »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #5
potamic wrote: post #4

What tends to be complex about build requirements that necessitates special purpose tools? Golang seems to be doing fine with just go build and go test. What else are people doing with gradle/maven that requires static typing, DAGs, plugins etc.?

I'm working on a project that encompasses both JVM (Gradle, Kotlin) and Golang. My hot take: JVM build tools, especially Gradle, are a soup of unnecessary complexity, and people working in that ecosystem have Stockholm Syndrome. In Golang, I spend about 99% of my time dealing with code. In JVM land, I'm spending 30% just dealing with the build system. It's actually insane, and the community at large thinks this is no…

> The amount of time it takes to publish a multi-platform Kotlin library for the first time can be measured in days. I published my first Golang library in minutes, by comparison.

It's a bit Apple & Orange comparison: publishing a JVM only Kotlin library is quite easy, it's the multiplatform part that takes time.

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