Fabric vs ForgeGradle

Fabric is a free, modular mod loader for Minecraft, with tools for playing and building mods. The Fabric Loader download supplies the basic loader; most mods also need Fabric API in the mods folder for the extra APIs they use. Players can install through options including Minecraft Launcher, Minecraft Server, MultiMC, CurseForge, GDLauncher, ATLauncher, MCUpdater, Technic, portablemc, and Metadata API. For developers, Fabric offers an online template generator, project templates, command-line tools, and an example mod repository. Fabric Loom is a Gradle plugin for developing and debugging mods. Its wider toolchain includes Yarn, open Minecraft mappings offered under CC0; Intermediary, which provides match information for cross-version mods; and Tiny Remapper for JAR files. Documentation covers player installation and troubleshooting as well as developer topics from setup through rendering and networking. Fabric is free, supports Java mods, and is described as mostly version independent. Its site says it is not an official Minecraft product and is not approved by or associated with Mojang.

ForgeGradle is a free Gradle plugin and Minecraft mod development framework used with Forge and FML. Its documentation focuses on setting up a mod development environment, not teaching Java, Groovy or Gradle. Setup requires a Java Development Kit and familiarity with an integrated development environment. The guide provides commands to generate run configurations for Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code. Configurations can specify arguments, working directories, task names, environment properties and system properties; Forge supplies client, server, data and gameTestServer run types. Developers can select human-readable mappings and use a reobf task to convert a mod JAR to SRG mappings for production. Dependencies can be sourced from repositories or a local flat directory and wrapped with fg.deobf. An optional Jar-in-Jar system bundles selected dependencies and records metadata during the build. The documentation covers Minecraft versions 1.12 through 1.19, plus 1.19.4. Its default stable and snapshot mappings are typically incomplete and are no longer available as of Minecraft 1.17. The repository identifies the license as LGPL-2.1.