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Comment by wiseowise | Hacker News Reader

I just want `uv`/`npm`/`crate` for JVM. Is that too much to ask?

Can someone from Astral fix Java too, please?

JVM build tools have to do much more than just dependency management because of how the JVM works (e.g. packaging resources). It's not really comparable.

It is literally creating zip file with jar extension and files inside of it. I’m pretty sure if they managed to figure out clusterfuck of Python, they can do the same for Java.

That's like saying "programming is just creating files with content".

Python is a purely interpreted language that runs in the context of your file system. Java code needs to be compiled and packaged, you have to write a manifest, you have to decide whether to include dependencies (fat jar) or not, or maybe you want to create a war (if you're stuck in the 2000s)... then what about maybe distributing the sources too?

Also, Maven works. Gradle works. Mill probably works too. The reason uv is a success is that everything Python had before was a broken mess. When people complain about JVM build tools, they come from a different position, not from one of "stuff is completely broken".

> Java code needs to be compiled and packaged, you have to write a manifest, you have to decide whether to include dependencies (fat jar) or not, or maybe you want to create a war (if you're stuck in the 2000s)... then what about maybe distributing the sources too?

I would probably be amazed at complexity of this, if I never touched Java in life.

The things you’re describing are literally a matter of a bash script to stitch together javac, jar and a couple of Unix tools.

Gradle is a monstrosity and abomination against the world. The only reason it exists is to give job to devex engineers and I’m willing to die on the hill. Maybe if it was rewritten in something faster and less memory hungry I’d be able to tolerate all this needless complexity, but until this piece of shit stops hogging all my memory and CPU time – its place is in the dumpster.

Great, then why don't you ship your software with bash scripts then?

Because Android is so entangled with Gradle that it is impossible to do anything without it.

An apk is just a ZIP file, as you yourself were saying. So if you want to build it all via bash scripts, feel free.

Already done way before me.

https://github.com/HemanthJabalpuri/AndroidExplorer

The problem is that there are bazillion of frameworks doing shit using Gradle plugins.

Is this portable? does it support incremental compilation? What about doc generation? code generation? running tests? generating test reports?

Of course things are simpler if you restrict yourself to 10% of the functionality.

Mill is in many ways trying to be `uv` for the JVM. 3-6x faster than the existing tools, bundling everything necessary builtin without plugin-hell, superior IDE support and toolability than existing tools. If you want a `uv` for Java, you should try out Mill!

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