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All - I want to state this upfront that I am looking at pure technical limitations without going into the opinionated user usage aspects or learning curve requirements. After going through this site requirements, I think it is alright to ask this question.

Everywhere I read only the advantages of Gradle and how it has hit the sweet spots that both Ant and Maven missed. But nowhere I could find clear technical limitations that perhaps makes it difficult to integrate with Gradle. In one of the places it cited about lack of Eclipse integration, but then it turned out that you don't need a maven like plugin for Gradle.

Any inputs in this regard is highly appreciated.

The Roy
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There are a lot of things that people who move over from the Maven world find missing in Gradle. Not really deal-breakers or "disadvantages" but definitely annoyances. Couple of quick things from the top of my head:

  • Gradle dependency cache is not portable. If you copy it between machines, it will break in most cases.

  • Gradle does not have a "Provided" dependency configuration This was fixed in v2.12

  • Per dependency repository configuration is not possible. (However AFAIK, this isn't possible with maven either)

  • While most proponents would consider gradle's flexibility it's greatest strength (as @CollinD noted in his comments above), it is quite possible to end up with spaghetti hand-to-understand build scripts exactly due to its flexibility. Some have proposed this could be a problem with Gradle.

That said gradle is constantly under active deployment, and there is a good chance these will be resolved in the near future.

Community
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RaGe
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  • In regards to `Provided` scope, you can _mostly_ do it in 2.12. See my answer [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18738888/how-to-use-provided-scope-for-jar-file-in-gradle-build/35989081#35989081). – mkobit Apr 06 '16 at 01:19