In a previous post we learned how we can use the inputs and outputs properties to set properties or files that need to be checked to see if a task is up to date. In this post we learn how a custom task class can use annotations to set input propertie…

Gradle has a very powerful incremental build feature. This means Gradle will not execute a task unless it is necessary. We can help Gradle and configure our task so it is ready for an incremental build. Suppose we have a task that generates a file. T…

Normally Gradle looks for a build script file with the name build.gradle in the current directory to execute a build. But we can easily use a different name or directory for the build file. We only have to use the -b or --build-file command-line opti…

Gradle Goodness: Task Output Annotations Create Directory Automatically One of the great features of Gradle is incremental build support. With incremental build support a task is only executed if it is really necessary. For example if a task generate…

To create an archive with Gradle is easy. We have several tasks like Zip, Tar, Jar, War and Ear to create a new archive. But there is no UnZip or UnTar to unpack an archive in Gradle. To unpack an archive we must use the Copy task and copy the conten…

If we run a Gradle build and one of the tasks fails, the whole build stops immediately. So we have fast feedback of our build status. If we don't want to this and want Gradle to execute all tasks, even though some might have failed, we use the comman…

Gradle uses the name build.gradle as the default name for a build file. If we write our build code in a file build.gradle then we don't have to specify the build filename when we run tasks. We can create build files with a different name other than b…

In Gradle we can group related tasks using the group property of a task. We provide the name of our group and if we look at the output of the tasks task we can see our tasks grouped in section with the given name. In the next sample we create a new t…

Gradle Goodness: Init Script for Adding Extra Plugins to Existing Projects Gradle is very flexible. One of the ways to alter the build configuration is with initialization or init scripts. These are like other Gradle scripts but are executed before t…

Gradle Goodness: Copy Files with Filtering Gradle's copy task is very powerful and includes filtering capabilities. This means we can change the contents of the files that are copied before they reach their new destination. We use the filter() method…