Gradle Effective Implementation Guide
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About this ebook
In Detail
Gradle is the next generation in build automation. It uses convention-over-configuration to provide good defaults, but is also flexible enough to be usable in every situation you encounter in daily development. Build logic is described with a powerful DSL and empowers developers to create reusable and maintainable build logic.
"Gradle Effective Implementation Guide" is a great introduction and reference for using Gradle. The Gradle build language is explained with hands on code and practical applications. You learn how to apply Gradle in your Java, Scala or Groovy projects, integrate with your favorite IDE and how to integrate with well-known continuous integration servers.
Start with the foundations and work your way through hands on examples to build your knowledge of Gradle to skyscraper heights. You will quickly learn the basics of Gradle, how to write tasks, work with files and how to use write build scripts using the Groovy DSL. Then as you develop you will be shown how to use Gradle for Java projects. Compile, package, test and deploy your applications with ease. When you've mastered the simple, move on to the sublime and integrate your code with continuous integration servers and IDEs. By the end of the "Gradle Effective Implementation Guide" you will be able to use Gradle in your daily development. Writing tasks, applying plugins and creating build logic will be second nature.
Approach
Written in Packt's tutorial format the hands on examples and real life applications that will guide you through Gradle and give you the knowledge to use it every day.
Who this book is for
If you are a Java developer who wants to automate compiling, packaging and deploying your application this book is for you.
Hubert Klein Ikkink
Hubert Klein Ikkink was born in 1973 and lives in Tilburg, the Netherlands, with his beautiful wife and gorgeous children. He is also known as mrhaki, which is simply the initials of his name prepended by mr. He studied Information Systems and Management at the Tilburg University. After finishing his studies he started to work at a company which specialized in knowledge-based software. There he started writing his first Java software (yes, an applet!) in 1996. Over the years his focus switched from applets, to servlets, to Java Enterprise Edition applications, to Spring-based software. In 2008 he wanted to have fun again when writing software. The larger projects he was working on were more about writing configuration XML files, tuning performance and less about real development in his eyes. So he started to look around and noticed Groovy as a good language to learn about. He could still use existing Java code, libraries, and his Groovy classes in Java. The learning curve isn't steep and to support his learning phase he wrote down interesting Groovy facts in his blog with the title Groovy Goodness. He posts small articles with a lot of code samples to understand how to use Groovy. Since November 2011 he is also a DZone Most Valuable Blogger (MVB); DZone also posts his blog items on their site. In 2010, 2011, and 2012 Hubert was invited to speak at Gr8Conf in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is a very good conference with all the project leaders of Groovy and Groovy-related projects. In November 2010 he presented a Gradle talk at the J-Fall conference of the Dutch Java User Group. In November 2011 he presented about the new features in Groovy 1.8 at the same conference. The conference is visited by 1000 Java developers and he got the chance to educate some of them about the greatness of Gradle and Groovy. Hubert works for a company called JDriven in the Netherlands. JDriven focuses on technologies that simplify and improve development of enterprise applications. Employees of JDriven have years of experience with Java and related technologies and are all eager to learn about new technologies. Hubert works on projects using Grails and Java combined with Groovy and Gradle.
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Gradle Effective Implementation Guide - Hubert Klein Ikkink
Table of Contents
Gradle Effective Implementation Guide
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
Why Subscribe?
Free Access for Packt account holders
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the example code
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. Starting with Gradle
Introducing Gradle
Declarative builds and convention over configuration
Support for Ant tasks and Maven repositories
Incremental builds
Multi-project builds
Gradle wrapper
Free and open source
Getting started
Installing Gradle
Writing our first build script
Default Gradle tasks
Task name abbreviation
Executing multiple tasks
Command-line options
Logging options
Changing the build file and directory
Running tasks without execution
Gradle daemon
Profiling
Understanding the Gradle user interface
Task Tree
Favorites
Command Line
Setup
Summary
2. Creating Gradle Build Scripts
Writing a build script
Defining tasks
Defining actions with the Action interface
Build scripts are Groovy code
Defining dependencies between tasks
Defining dependencies via tasks
Defining dependencies via closures
Setting default tasks
Organizing tasks
Adding a description to tasks
Grouping tasks together
Adding tasks in other ways
Using task rules
Accessing tasks as project properties
Adding additional properties to tasks
Avoiding common pitfalls
Skipping tasks
Using onlyIf predicates
Skipping tasks by throwing StopExecutionException
Enabling and disabling tasks
Skipping from the command line
Skipping tasks that are up-to-date
Summary
3. Working with Gradle Build Scripts
Working with files
Locating files
Using file collections
Working with file trees
Copying files
Renaming files
Filtering files
Archiving files
Project properties
Defining custom properties in script
Passing properties via the command line
Defining properties via system properties
Adding properties via environment variables
Defining properties using an external file
Using logging
Controlling output
Using the Gradle wrapper
Creating wrapper scripts
Customizing the Gradle wrapper
Summary
4. Using Gradle for Java Projects
Using plugins
Getting started
Using the Java plugin
Working with source sets
Creating a new source set
Custom configuration
Working with properties
Creating documentation
Assembling archives
Summary
5. Dependency Management
Dependency configuration
Repositories
Adding Maven repositories
Adding Ivy repositories
Adding a local directory repository
Defining dependencies
Using external module dependencies
Using project dependencies
Using file dependencies
Using client module dependencies
Using Gradle and Groovy dependencies
Accessing configuration dependencies
Setting dynamic versions
Resolving version conflicts
Adding optional ANT tasks
Using dependency configurations as files
Summary
6. Testing, Building, and Publishing Artifacts
Testing
Using TestNG for testing
Configuring the test process
Determining tests
Logging test output
Generating test reports
Running Java applications
Running an application from a project
Running an application as task
Running an application with the application plugin
Creating a distributable application archive
Publishing artifacts
Uploading to a Maven repository
Multiple artifacts
Signing artifacts
Publishing signature files
Configuring conditional signing
Packaging Java Enterprise Edition applications
Creating a WAR file
Using the War plugin
Creating an EAR file
Using the Ear plugin
Summary
7. Multi-project Builds
Working with multi-project builds
Executing tasks by project path
Using a flat layout
Defining projects
Filtering projects
Defining task dependencies between projects
Defining configuration dependencies
Working with Java multi-project builds
Using partial builds
Using the Jetty plugin
Summary
8. Mixed Languages
Using the Groovy plugin
Creating documentation with the Groovy plugin
Using the Scala plugin
Creating documentation with the Scala plugin
Summary
9. Maintaining Code Quality
Using the Checkstyle plugin
Using the PMD plugin
Using the FindBugs plugin
Using the JDepend plugin
Using the CodeNarc plugin
Using the Sonar plugin
Summary
10. Writing Custom Tasks and Plugins
Creating a custom task
Creating a custom task in the build file
Using incremental build support
Creating a task in the project source directory
Writing tests
Creating a task in a standalone project
Creating a custom plugin
Creating a plugin in the build file
Creating a plugin in the project source directory
Testing a plugin
Creating a plugin in a standalone project
Summary
11. Using Gradle with Continuous Integration
Creating a sample project
Using Jenkins
Adding the Gradle plugin
Configuring Jenkins job
Running the job
Configuring artifacts and test results
Adding Gradle versions
Using JetBrains TeamCity
Creating a project
Running the project
Using Atlassian Bamboo
Defining a build plan
Running the build plan
Summary
12. IDE Support
Using the Eclipse plugin
Customizing generated files
Customizing using DSL
Customizing with merge hooks
Customizing with XML manipulation
Merging configuration
Configuring WTP
Customizing file generation
Using the IntelliJ IDEA plugin
Customizing file generation
Customizing using DSL
Customizing with merged hooks
Customizing with XML manipulation
Running Gradle in Eclipse
Installing Gradle plugin
Importing Gradle project
Running tasks
Editing build files
Running Gradle in IntelliJ IDEA
Installing the plugin
Importing a project
Running tasks
Summary
Index
Gradle Effective Implementation Guide
Gradle Effective Implementation Guide
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: October 2012
Production Reference: 1181012
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84951-810-9
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Syarafuddin (<syarafuddin@yahoo.com>)
Credits
Author
Hubert Klein Ikkink
Reviewers
René Gröschke
Rajmahendra Hegde
Michał Huniewicz
James L. Williams
Acquisition Editor
Martin Bell
Lead Technical Editor
Sweny M. Sukumaran
Technical Editors
Dipesh Panchal
Unnati Shah
Dominic Pereira
Copy Editors
Brandt D’Mello
Insiya Morbiwala
Aditya Nair
Project Coordinator
Sai Gamare
Proofreader
Maria Gould
Clyde Jenkins
Mario Cecere
Indexer
Rekha Nair
Production Coordinator
Nitesh Thakur
Cover Work
Nitesh Thakur
About the Author
Hubert Klein Ikkink was born in 1973 and lives in Tilburg, the Netherlands, with his beautiful wife and gorgeous children. He is also known as mrhaki, which is simply the initials of his name prepended by mr. He studied Information Systems and Management at the Tilburg University. After finishing his studies he started to work at a company which specialized in knowledge-based software. There he started writing his first Java software (yes, an applet!) in 1996. Over the years his focus switched from applets, to servlets, to Java Enterprise Edition applications, to Spring-based software.
In 2008 he wanted to have fun again when writing software. The larger projects he was working on were more about writing configuration XML files, tuning performance and less about real development in his eyes. So he started to look around and noticed Groovy as a good language to learn about. He could still use existing Java code, libraries, and his Groovy classes in Java. The learning curve isn’t steep and to support his learning phase he wrote down interesting Groovy facts in his blog with the title Groovy Goodness. He posts small articles with a lot of code samples to understand how to use Groovy. Since November 2011 he is also a DZone Most Valuable Blogger (MVB); DZone also posts his blog items on their site.
In 2010, 2011, and 2012 Hubert was invited to speak at Gr8Conf in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is a very good conference with all the project leaders of Groovy and Groovy-related projects. In November 2010 he presented a Gradle talk at the J-Fall conference of the Dutch Java User Group. In November 2011 he presented about the new features in Groovy 1.8 at the same conference. The conference is visited by 1000 Java developers and he got the chance to educate some of them about the greatness of Gradle and Groovy.
Hubert works for a company called JDriven in the Netherlands. JDriven focuses on technologies that simplify and improve development of enterprise applications. Employees of JDriven have years of experience with Java and related technologies and are all eager to learn about new technologies. Hubert works on projects using Grails and Java combined with Groovy and Gradle.
Acknowledgement
It was a great honor to be asked by Packt Publishing to write this book. I knew beforehand it would be a lot of work and somehow needed to be combined with my daytime job. I couldn’t have written the book without the help of a lot of people and I would like to thank them.
First of all I would like to thank my family for supporting me while writing this book. They gave me space and time to write the book. Thank you for your patience and a big kiss for Kim, Britt, and Liam; I love you. I also like to thank my colleagues at JDriven. They reviewed the pages I wrote and helped me by asking questions and showing interest in the progress of the book. Of course I like to thank all the people at Gradleware for making Gradle such a great build tool and René Gröschke for reviewing the chapters in the book.
Finally I’d like to thank the great staff at Packt Publishing. Sai Gamare kept me on schedule and made sure everything was submitted on time. I’d also like to thank all the editors for reviewing the book. They really helped me to keep focus and be concise with the text.
About the Reviewers
René Gröschke has been working as a Software Engineer for more than eight years now. He has worked on several international projects and regularly shares his passion and experience of agile methodologies and software craftsmanship with other developers at different national and international conferences or with bachelor students of the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) in Germany.
Supporting Gradle and the Gradle community by providing plugins, patches, screencasts, and talks since the early days, René has turned his hobby into his occupation and is now part of the core developer team of Gradle working for Gradleware. From time to time, he’s contributing to other open source projects, such as Macports or Griffon.
Rajmahendra Hegde has been a Java Developer since 2000. He is currently working for Logica as Project Lead/Architect. He is a User Group lead for Java User Group – Chennai. He has contributed to JSRs and Scalaxia.com. He is the committer for Visage. His primary areas of interest are JEE, JavaFX, JVM Languages (Groovy, Scala, and Visage), NetBeans, and Gradle. You can follow him at @rajonjava.
Michał Huniewicz is a Software Developer, with several years of experience in the JVM technologies. He has been involved in projects for a variety of industries, including banking, press, finance, telecoms, and the government. He was also the head developer of an award-winning community portal. Apart from being an active blogger (http://blog.m1key.me/), he is a passionate photographer and traveller. He holds an M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from Adam Mickiewicz University. Currently, he lives in London.
I would like to thank my parents, Rita and Andrzej, for their continued support and for having faith in me.
James L. Williams is a developer based in Silicon Valley and a frequent international conference speaker. He is the author of the book Learning HTML5 Game Programming for Addison-Wesley. He blogs at http://jameswilliams.be/blog and tweets as @ecspike.
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Preface
Gradle is the next-generation build automation. Not only does Gradle use convention over configuration to provide good defaults, it is also adaptable for use in every situation you encounter in daily development. Build logic is described with a powerful DSL and empowers developers to create reusable and maintainable build logic.
We will see more about Gradle in this book. We will learn about Gradle's features with code samples throughout the book. We will learn how to write tasks, work with files, and write build scripts using the Groovy DSL. Next, we will learn how to use Gradle in projects to compile, package, test, check code quality and deploy applications. And finally, we will see how to integrate Gradle with continuous integration servers and development environments (IDEs).
After reading this book, we will know how to use Gradle in our daily development. We can write tasks, apply plugins, and write build logic using the Gradle build language.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Starting with Gradle, introduces Gradle and explains how to install Gradle. We will write our first Gradle script and learn about the command-line and GUI features of Gradle.
Chapter 2, Creating Gradle Build Scripts, looks at tasks as part of the Gradle build scripts. We will see how we can define tasks and use task dependencies to describe build logic.
Chapter 3, Working with Gradle Build Scripts, covers more functionality that we can apply in Gradle scripts. We will learn how to work with files and directories, apply logging to our build scripts, and use properties to parameterize our build scripts.
Chapter 4, Using Gradle for Java Projects, is all about using the Java plugin for Gradle projects. Gradle offers several tasks and configuration conventions that make working with Java projects very easy. We will see how we can customize the configuration for projects that cannot follow the conventions.
Chapter 5, Dependency Management, covers the support for dependencies by Gradle. We will learn how to use configurations to organize dependencies. We will also see how we can use repositories with dependencies in our build scripts.
Chapter 6, Testing, Building, and Publishing Artifacts, is an introduction to Gradle support for running tests from the build script. We will learn how we can build several artifacts for a project and publish the artifacts to a repository so other developers can reuse our code.
Chapter 7, Multi-project Builds, covers Gradle's support for multi-project builds. With Gradle, we can easily configure multiple projects that are related to each other. We will also see how Gradle can automatically build related or dependent projects if necessary.
Chapter 8, Mixed Languages, is about the Scala and Groovy plugins that are included with Gradle, to work with projects that have Scala or Groovy code.
Chapter 9, Maintaining Code Quality, introduces Gradle's code quality plugins. We will see how we can use and configure the plugins to include code analysis in our build process.
Chapter 10, Writing Custom Tasks and Plugins, covers what we need to do to write our own custom tasks and plugins. We will see how we can decouple the definition and usage of a custom task and plugin into separate source files. We will also learn how we can reuse our custom tasks and plugins in other projects
Chapter 11, Using Gradle with Continuous Integration, is an introduction to the support of several continuous integration tools for Gradle. We will learn how we can configure a continuous integration server to automatically invoke our Gradle build scripts.
Chapter 12, IDE Support, looks at how Gradle can generate project files for Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. We will also see how the IDEs support Gradle from within the IDE to run (for example) tasks, and keep track of dependencies defined in Gradle scripts.
What you need for this book
In order to work with Gradle and the code samples in the book, we need at least a Java Development Kit (JDK 1.5 or higher), Gradle, and a good text editor. In Chapter 1, Starting with Gradle, we will see how we can install Gradle on our computer.
Who this book is for
This book is for you if you work on Java (Scala or Groovy) applications and want to use build automation to compile, package, and deploy your application automatically. You might have worked with other build automation tools such as Maven or ANT, but this is not necessary to understand the topics in this book.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: In our first build we only have one task, so the command gradle h should work just fine.
A block of code is set as follows:
task helloWorld << {
println 'Hello world.'
}
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
apply plugin: 'java'
archivesBaseName = 'gradle-sample'
version = '1.0'
sourceSets {
api
}
task apiJar(type: Jar) {
appendix = 'api' from sourceSets.api.output
}
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
hello-world $ gradle helloWorld :helloWorld Hello world.
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 2.047 secs
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: We select the plugin and click on the button Install without restart
.
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Starting with Gradle
When we develop software, we write code, compile code, test our code, package our code, and finally, distribute the code. We can automate these steps by using a build system. The big advantage is that we have a repeatable sequence of steps. Each time, the build system will follow the steps we have defined, so we can concentrate on writing the actual code and not worry about the other steps.
Gradle is such a build system. In this chapter, we will explain what Gradle is and how to use it in our development projects.
Introducing Gradle
Gradle is a tool for build automation. With Gradle, we can automate the compiling, testing, packaging, and deployment of our software or other types of projects. Gradle is flexible but has sensible defaults for most projects. This means we can rely on the defaults, if we don't want something special, but can still use the flexibility to adapt a build to certain custom needs.
Gradle is already used by big open source projects, such as Spring, Hibernate, and Grails. Enterprise companies such as LinkedIn also use Gradle.
Let's take a look at some of Gradle's features.
Declarative builds and convention over configuration
Gradle uses a Domain Specific Language (DSL) based on Groovy to declare builds.The DSL provides a flexible language that can be extended by us. Because the DSL is based on Groovy, we can write Groovy code to describe a build and use the power and expressiveness of the Groovy language. Groovy is a language for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), such as Java and Scala. Groovy makes it easy to work with collections, has closures, and has a lot of useful features. The syntax is closely related to the Java syntax. In fact, we could write a Groovy class file with Java syntax and it would compile. But, using the Groovy syntax makes it easier to express the code intent, and we need less boilerplate code than with Java. To get the