Book Image

Gradle Effective Implementation Guide

Book Image

Gradle Effective Implementation Guide

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Gradle Effective Implementation Guide
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Working with files


It is very common in a build script that we have to work with files and directories. For example, when we need to copy a file from one directory to another, or when we first create a directory to store the output of a task or program.

Locating files

To locate a file or directory relative to the current project, we can use the file() method. This method is actually a method of the Project object that is connected to our build script. In the previous chapter we learned how we could use an explicit reference to the project variable or simply invoke methods and properties of the Project object implicitly.

The file() method will resolve the location of a file or directory relative to the current project and not the current working directory. This is very useful because we can run a build script from a different directory than the location of the actual build script. File or directory references that are returned by the file() method are then resolved relative to the project directory...