Gradle vs Spack
Gradle
gradle.orgSpack
spack.ioSide by side
| Figure | Gradle | Spack |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Package Managers | 8.7 (#11) | 8.6 (#17) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Gradle lists integrations or support for Android Studio, Ant, Maven and Ivy repositories, and Checkstyle, CodeNarc, PMD, and JaCoCo. | Spack's services page lists GitLab, CDash, Grafana, Prometheus, and Metabase. |
| Intended users | Gradle describes itself as the open-source build system of choice for Java, Android, and Kotlin developers, from startups to large enterprises. | Spack was designed for large supercomputing centers where users and application teams share software installations across clusters and varied architectures. |
| Lockfile support | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Gradle Build Tool automates building software of any type, size, or complexity. | Spack is a package manager that makes installing scientific software easy on supercomputers, Linux, macOS, and Windows. |
| Security | Gradle includes dependency verification; the maker says open-source security fixes are limited by its end-of-life policy, while its Security Subscription offers prioritized fixes under SLA and extended maintenance. | The project repository links to a security policy. |
Plans
In their own words
Gradle
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.
Spack
Spack is a package manager for installing scientific software on supercomputers, Linux, macOS, and Windows. It is designed for large supercomputing centers that share software across clusters and varied architectures, and is available at free. Users can choose package versions, compiler choices, target architectures, and compile-time options, while controlling direct and transitive dependencies. Spack can build stacks that combine Python or R packages with C, C++, or Fortran libraries. Each distinct package and dependency configuration receives its own prefix, so different builds can coexist without a new installation disrupting an existing one. Software can be installed to a user-selected directory without administrator privileges. Spack primarily builds customized software from source and also supports binary installation through build caches. It supports lockfiles, environment management, and private registries. Package recipes are Python scripts, and the `spack create` command generates starter boilerplate. The project is distributed under either the MIT license or Apache License 2.0, at the user's option.