Build rot is the silent degradation of your build system’s effectiveness.
It is a result of poor practices, neglect, or simply the passage of time.
It is like rust corroding a piece of machinery.
In this case, it gradually eats into the heart of your build system, causing it to slow down, become unpredictable, or become more challenging to maintain.
This phenomenon appears within any build tool and continuous integration pipeline.
What are the most common sources of build rot?
- Dependencies
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Poorly managed dependencies are one characteristic of build rot common to Maven and Gradle.
Both build systems offer powerful dependency management capabilities.
But neglecting regular updates to these dependencies can add vulnerable libraries to your build, directly impact build speed, and introduce compatibility issues.
An overly complex Gradle build.gradle or maven pom.xml file, cluttered with unnecessary dependencies or outdated plugins, can significantly extend build times and become a maintenance nightmare.
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Check your dependencies once a week and systematically update them.
Use the latest version and run your unit and integration tests.
If everything is green, you are good to go.
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- Over-customization
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Gradle’s flexibility is one of its strong suits, and yet it can ironically invite build rot.
Over-customization, while seemingly advantageous in the short run, can result in a convoluted build.gradle file.
These scripts can become so complicated that they require more effort to first comprehend and then maintain.
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Define standard build processes as plugins in your buildSrc.
Eliminate all imperative logic from regular build.gradle scripts.
Better follow the conventions and processes of standard plugins instead of creating custom logic.
We use this approach in our projects and Open Source Components to ensure a consistent build process across all projects.
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- Redundant tasks and misconfigured scripts
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Moreover, this complexity can have a significant impact on build speed.
If scripts include redundant tasks or simply take a long time to execute your Groovy or Kotlin configuration, the build speed can slow to a frustrating crawl.
Misconfigured scripts can also lead to extended test times, further exacerbating the build rot.
Always prefer standard plugins to build artifacts.
- Suboptimal parallelization
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Another silent perpetrator of build rot is the under-utilization of parallel execution capabilities offered by both Maven and Gradle.
Both support parallel builds.
Not taking advantage of this feature can lead to unnecessarily long build times.
Similarly, not properly organizing your project into modules can result in unnecessary rebuilds of unchanged code, further slowing down your build process.
Modern software engineering practices promote modularity and low coupling between components.
- Deprecated features and APIs
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Sticking with deprecated features or APIs in your build scripts can also contribute to build rot.
These deprecated features might be less efficient than their newer counterparts and might be removed in future build tool versions.
The time and effort needed to refactor your scripts, once these features are eventually removed, add to the maintenance burden and deepen the build rot.
Refactoring is a mandatory practice to integrate improvements of your build tool into your scripts.
