Eclipse build automatically vs (Ant/Maven/Gradle)

Question

Eclipse自动构建与构建工具（Ant / Maven / Gradle）之间有什么区别？

Answer 1

Build automatically means incrementally compile Java code on save by Eclipse own Java compiler, whereas a full Ant/Maven/Gradle build usually uses javac to compile the code and also does other things, eg creating of a JAR.

In Eclipse it's not versus , but an interplay of both:

1. You specify the dependencies in the pom.xml or build.gradle file
2. Maven/Gradle (embedded and triggered by Eclipse) resolves the dependencies and downloads the missing JARs into a local repository (Ant does not support this)
3. Eclipse incremental compiles the code (the required classpath is computed from the pom.xml / build.gradle file)
   • → Problems and quick fixes are displayed
   • → Code can be instantly executed
4. To create artifacts to deploy, run Ant/Maven/Gradle build
   • → Same artifacts independent where it has been built