Fabric vs Neo-Loom

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.

Neo-Loom is a free Gradle plugin for Minecraft mod development environments using NeoForge or MinecraftForge. It is a fork of Fabric Loom and is heavily based on Architectury Loom. Implemented support includes NeoForge 1.21+ and MinecraftForge 1.20.1+. The plugin supports multi-loader projects, dependency management, client and server scope, and dedicated server support. It provides run configurations for NeoForge and MinecraftForge covering server data, client data, and game test server environments. Neo-Loom supports Jar-in-Jar packaging, converts ClassTweaker or AccessWidener files to AccessTransformer format, and supports publishing and consuming ModDevGradle-compatible Access Transformers and Interface Injections. Devlaunch is listed as implemented. Setup uses the Fabric and RelativityMC Maven repositories and the Gradle Plugin Portal, with plugin IDs shown in the README. The repository is MIT licensed and points users to Discord for support. Listed unfinished work includes JUnit, production launch tasks, and split-source, client-only, and server-only setups for (Neo)Forge.