Quick Shell Function to Bootstrap a Gradle Groovy Project

2012/02/29

Gradle is a great build tool. It’s easy to download and install. If you’re on a mac and have homebrew, it’s as easy as:

brew install gradle

It’s very easy to use with a little experience, but I find having a good starting place to base your work from can help.

Here’s a quick function that I’ve got in my .zshrc to bootstrap a new groovy gradle project in the current directory (it should also work in in a .profile/.bash_profile/.bashrc).

function newgradle() {
    echo "Creating files for new gradle project"
 
    cat <<EOF>.gitignore
*.un~
*.iml
*.ipr
*.iws
build
.gradle
EOF
 
    cat <<EOF>build.gradle
apply plugin: 'groovy'
apply plugin: 'idea'
 
repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
 
dependencies {
    groovy 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all:1.8.6'
    groovy 'org.apache.ivy:ivy:2.2.0'
    testCompile 'junit:junit:4.10'
}
 
task createSourceDirs(description : 'Create empty source directories for all defined sourceSets') << {
    sourceSets*.allSource.srcDirs.flatten().each { File sourceDirectory ->
        if (!sourceDirectory.exists()) {
            println "Making \$sourceDirectory"
            sourceDirectory.mkdirs()
        }
    }
}
 
idea {
    project {
        jdkName = '1.6'
    }
}
EOF
 
    gradle createSourceDirs
 
    git init
    ls -a1 && find src    # list all created assets
}

It creates a build.gradle file ready to work with java and groovy projects, including IDEA integration (just execute gradle idea).

This gives you all of the tasks necessary to compile, jar, test, and distribute your code. For more information, check out the gradle docs on the java, groovy, and idea tasks.

It also creates all the necessary source directories for you and initializes a new git repository (with starting .gitignore file) for you to save your work.

You can easily tweak the build.gradle or .gitignore files to fit your needs. If you don’t use git, you can either delete those lines, or subsitute the equivalent lines for the source control tool you use. These are just a good starting place for me.

Here’s the sample output from the script above:

% mkdir testapp
% cd testapp
% newgradle                                                                   
Creating files for new gradle project
:createSourceDirs
Making /Users/tnaleid/Documents/workspace/testapp/src/main/resources
Making /Users/tnaleid/Documents/workspace/testapp/src/main/java
Making /Users/tnaleid/Documents/workspace/testapp/src/main/groovy
Making /Users/tnaleid/Documents/workspace/testapp/src/test/resources
Making /Users/tnaleid/Documents/workspace/testapp/src/test/java
Making /Users/tnaleid/Documents/workspace/testapp/src/test/groovy
 
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
 
Total time: 2.344 secs
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/tnaleid/Documents/workspace/testapp/.git/
.
..
.git
.gitignore
.gradle
build.gradle
src
src
src/main
src/main/groovy
src/main/java
src/main/resources
src/test
src/test/groovy
src/test/java
src/test/resources

Then you’ve got all this gradle functionality ready to use:

% gradle tasks                                                           
:tasks
 
------------------------------------------------------------
All tasks runnable from root project
------------------------------------------------------------
 
Build tasks
-----------
assemble - Assembles all Jar, War, Zip, and Tar archives.
build - Assembles and tests this project.
buildDependents - Assembles and tests this project and all projects that depend on it.
buildNeeded - Assembles and tests this project and all projects it depends on.
classes - Assembles the main classes.
clean - Deletes the build directory.
jar - Assembles a jar archive containing the main classes.
testClasses - Assembles the test classes.
 
Documentation tasks
-------------------
groovydoc - Generates Groovydoc API documentation for the main source code.
javadoc - Generates Javadoc API documentation for the main source code.
 
Help tasks
----------
dependencies - Displays the dependencies of root project 'test'.
help - Displays a help message
projects - Displays the sub-projects of root project 'test'.
properties - Displays the properties of root project 'test'.
tasks - Displays the tasks runnable from root project 'test' (some of the displayed tasks may belong to subprojects).
 
IDE tasks
---------
cleanIdea - Cleans IDEA project files (IML, IPR)
idea - Generates IDEA project files (IML, IPR, IWS)
 
Verification tasks
------------------
check - Runs all checks.
test - Runs the unit tests.
 
Other tasks
-----------
cleanIdeaWorkspace
createSourceDirs - Create empty source directories for all defined sourceSets
 
Rules
-----
Pattern: build<ConfigurationName>: Assembles the artifacts of a configuration.
Pattern: upload<ConfigurationName>: Assembles and uploads the artifacts belonging to a configuration.
Pattern: clean<TaskName>: Cleans the output files of a task.
 
To see all tasks and more detail, run with --all.
 
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
 
Total time: 4.871 secs

There are 2 comments in this article:

  1. 2012/03/5An Army of Solipsists » Blog Archive » This Week in Grails (2012-09) say:

    [...] Quick Shell Function to Bootstrap a Gradle Groovy Project [...]

  2. 2012/03/6Questa settimana in Grails (2012-09) - luca-canducci.com - Il blog di Luca Canducci: notizie, tips e nuove tecnologie dal mondo dell’IT. say:

    [...] Quick Shell Function to Bootstrap a Gradle Groovy Project [...]

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