Gradle is a build automation tool written in Groovy. It's very concise and lightning fast, as there is no XML configuration (unlike Maven) Gradle makes building and running applications very easy and there is no need for people using your projects to have Gradle installed. Gradle wrapper comes bundled with the project.
build.gradle is the Gradle build script file, which is equivalent to Maven's pom.xml and it normally lives at the top level of your project. It consists of all the details about plugins, build metadata, repositories, and dependencies.
tasks define a unit of work that is invoked from the command line when we send commands like ./gradlew build. Tasks have dependencies on other tasks, which leads to the creation of task graph.
We can also create our own tasks.
wrapper is the script used to invoke Gradle and run tasks. It contains the specific version of Gradle for your project. No local Gradle installation is required for anyone building your project.
Gradle Java plugin provides us with all the tasks that are required for our Java project. Some tasks included in the Java plugin:
- Compiling classes:
./gradlew compileJava - Managing resources:
./gradlew processResources - Package into jar file:
./gradlew jar - Easily run tests:
./gradlew test