Fabric vs Gradle

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.

Gradle Build Tool is a free, open-source system for automating software builds across projects of different types and sizes. Build logic can use either Kotlin DSL or Groovy DSL. Incremental builds, caching and parallel task execution support the build process, while Gradle downloads and manages transitive dependencies from Maven- and Ivy-compatible repositories. The Gradle Wrapper can provision a build environment and specify the Gradle version used by a project. Its ecosystem covers JVM, Android, C/C++, Swift, Objective-C and assembler projects, and it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. The Tooling API lets IDEs and other tools inspect projects, run builds, receive progress events and cancel operations. Listed support includes Android Studio and Ant, plus Checkstyle, CodeNarc, PMD and JaCoCo. Gradle includes dependency verification. The maker says open-source security fixes are limited by its end-of-life policy; its Security Subscription offers prioritized fixes under SLA and extended maintenance, but does not guarantee a clean scanner report when findings come from third-party libraries.