Strange, gradle is just way faster in my use cases. Maven has always been a pain with regards to speed with handling dependencies.
I posted it in another comment, but I am willing to record it when my time allows. It is quite baffling. I never encountered such slow compilation times even though I compiled some C++ projects before.
By the way: I also use `googleJavaFormat` and `ktlint` to format both Java and Kotlin files. I also pack textures before running the game.
In any case, my old hardware may be at fault here, or the fact that I also run multiple things in the background, or that I run a couple of Gradle tasks, or a combination of these things.
Do you have a fast SSD? It makes an enormous difference in build times
In general, if you aren't already using a JVM language, there is not a whole lot of reason to use maven or gradle. Pretty much every language has equivalent native build tooling that you should be using instead.
If you are using a JVM language, even for part of your build process, then both can be used as the primary build tool and invoke the build tooling of the other ecosystems as needed. This is most useful when you have a native component that you are using from the JVM.
I have in the past used gradle to build the native C++ components for apps, but in general it reached out to msbuild on windows, and make files on linux.
I've used gradle it to invoke npm commands to build the frontend component of a WAR java webapp.