Gradle Goodness: Enable Task Based On Offline Command Line Argument

Posted on June 6, 2018 by mrhaki

One of the command line options of Gradle is --offline. With this option we run Gradle in offline mode to indicate we are not connected to network resources like the internet. This could be useful for example if we have defined dependencies in our build script that come from a remote repository, but we cannot access the remote repository, and we still want to run the build. Gradle will use the locally cached dependencies, without checking the remote repository. New dependencies, not already cached, cannot be downloaded of course, so in that scenario we still need a network connection.

We can check in our build script if the --offline command line argument is used. We can use this to disable tasks that depend on network resources so the build will not fail. To see if we invoked our build with the --offline option we can access the property gradle.startParameter.offline. The value is true if the command line argument --offline is used and false if the command line argument is not used.

Continue reading →

Run one or Exclude one test with Maven

Posted on October 9, 2017 by Mathijs de Groot

From time to time you only want to run one test, one test method, one class or one package from the command-line.

Or on the contrary: you want to exclude / ignore one specific test or group of tests during the build cycle.

Excluding tests from the build cycle by the command line usually occurs when the following scenarios meet:

A test requires significant amount of resources (time, memory, disk space, etc.)
The run needs to be independent from the IDE (reenact the Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery pipeline) as some IDEs load test-dependencies on the compile-time class-path.
You have no or limited ability to change the code-base
Continue reading →

Spicy Spring: Create New Projects From a URL

Posted on March 17, 2016 by mrhaki

To quickly start with a Spring project we can use the website start.spring.io. Via a user interface we can set project properties and at the end we have a project archive (Zip or gzipped Tar file) or build file (pom.xml or build.gradle). We can also directory access an URL to create the output files and we set the properties via request parameters. This way you can share a link with someone and if they click on it they will download the generated project archive or build files.

Continue reading →

Gradle Goodness: Lazy Task Properties

Posted on March 9, 2016 by mrhaki

When we create our own custom tasks we might need to support lazy evaluation of task properties. A Gradle build has three phases: initialisation, configuration and execution. Task properties can be set during the configuration phase, for example when a task is configured in a build file. But our task can also evaluate the value for a task property at execution time. To support evaluation during execution time we must write a lazy getter method for the property. Also we must define the task property with def or type Object. Because of the Object type we can use different types to set a value. For example a Groovy Closure or Callable interface implementation can be used to execute later than during the configuration phase of our Gradle build. Inside the getter method we invoke the Closure or Callable to get the real value of the task property.

Continue reading →

Gradle Goodness: Apply External Script With Plugin Configured Through Buildscript

Posted on November 10, 2015 by mrhaki

Suppose we use the Gradle apply from: statement to import another Gradle build file into our build file. The external build file uses a Gradle plugin that needs a buildscript block to define the classpath configuration with the classes needed for the plugin. We cannot use the plugin id inside our external build script to use it, but we must use the type of the plugin. Otherwise Gradle cannot resolve the plugin from the main build file.

Continue reading →

Gradle Goodness: Setting Global Properties For All Gradle Builds

Posted on October 29, 2015 by mrhaki

To define project properties outside the Gradle build file, we can define them in a file gradle.properties in our project directory. If we want to define property values that are used by all Gradle builds we can create a file gradle.properties in the GRADLE_USER_HOME directory. By default this is in the USER_HOME/.gradle directory.

Continue reading →

Gradle Goodness: Download Javadoc Files For Dependencies In IDE

Posted on October 27, 2015 by mrhaki

Gradle has an idea and eclipse plugin that we can use to configure IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse project files. When we apply these plugins to our project we get extra tasks to generate and change project files. Inside our Gradle build file we get new configuration blocks to specify properties or invoke methods that will change the configuration files. One of the nice things to add is to let the IDE download Javadoc files for dependencies in our Java/Groovy projects. By default the sources for a dependency are already downloaded and added to the project, but Javadoc files are not downloaded.

Continue reading →

Grails Goodness: Run Gradle Tasks In Grails Interactive Mode

Posted on October 20, 2015 by mrhaki

To start Grails in interactive mode we simply type grails on the command line. This starts Grails and we get an environment to run Grails commands like compile and run-app. Since Grails 3 the underlying build system has changed from Gant to Gradle. We can invoke Gradle tasks in interactive mode with the gradle command. Just like we would use Gradle from the command line we can run the same tasks, but this time when Grails is in interactive mode. Grails will use the Gradle version that belongs to the current Grails version.
We even get TAB completion for Gradle tasks.

Continue reading →

Spicy Spring: Java System Properties As Configuration Properties With Spring Boot

Posted on September 30, 2015 by mrhaki

In a previous post we learned that configuration property values can be passed via environment variables. With Spring Boot we can also pass the values using Java system properties. So if we have a property sample.message then we can use -Dsample.message=value to pass a value when we run the application. If we use the Spring Boot Gradle plugin we must reconfigure the bootRun task to pass Java system properties from the command-line.

Continue reading →

Gradle Goodness: Pass Java System Properties To Java Tasks

Posted on September 29, 2015 by mrhaki

Gradle is of course a great build tool for Java related projects. If we have tasks in our projects that need to execute a Java application we can use the JavaExec task. When we need to pass Java system properties to the Java application we can set the systemProperties property of the JavaExec task. We can assign a value to the systemProperties property or use the method systemProperties that will add the properties to the existing properties already assigned. Now if we want to define the system properties from the command-line when we run Gradle we must pass along the properties to the task. Therefore we must reconfigure a JavaExec task and assign System.properties to the systemProperties property.

Continue reading →