Gradle tips and insights for Java developers

There’s another side to Maven: a vital repository system serving up dependencies for the millions of daily Java builds.

If you’re building Gradle projects in IntelliJ IDEA, you’re probably not using the IDE to its full advantage. So to help you save time and avoid unnecessary work, here are my top 10 tips to working like a pro. 1) Create Gradle project using IntelliJ IDEA First off, use IntelliJ IDEA it to create new Gradle projects. From the Welcome to IntelliJ IDEA screen select New Project to open the New Project dialog....

Do you want to fully understand the difference between Maven phases and goals, and how to execute each of them? OK, let’s start at the low-level and work our way upwards. At its core Maven is a Java build tool which takes your project from some source files and resources to a shiny jar file ready to run. The way Maven achieves this, just like anything worthwhile doing in life, is by executing some code....

If your Gradle build has only a single project then you could be missing out on important benefits of multi-project builds. Splitting Gradle projects into multiple subprojects is almost always a good idea, so in this article you’ll discover the 4 benefits of using Gradle multi-projects builds to setup your project for success. Single vs. multi-project builds Before we get into the 1st benefit, let’s define what a multi-project build is and how it differs from a single-project build....

Discover the best way to add a dependency to a Gradle project and understand what Gradle does to make the dependency available to your application code. Sometimes when you’re developing an application you need to use code from another library. In the below Java application built with Gradle, I want to use the StringUtils class to process the input by switching it to upper case. package com.tomgregory; import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils; public class Application { public static void main(String[] args) { String processedString = StringUtils....

Learn everything you’ll ever need to know about Gradle’s task for creating artifacts, assemble. Assemble is a task you run from the command line using ./gradlew assemble in Linux and Mac or gradlew assemble in Windows. To fully understand assemble you need to know about the 2 types of Gradle tasks: actionable tasks have some action(s) attached to do work in your build lifecycle tasks are workflow tasks with no actions attached Assemble is a lifecycle task with no actions attached....

In this article you’ll discover everything you’ll ever need to know about Gradle’s verification task, check. Check is a task you run from the command line using ./gradlew check in Linux and Mac or gradlew check in Windows. To understand check, know that Gradle has 2 types of tasks: actionable tasks have some action(s) attached to do work in your build lifecycle tasks are workflow tasks with no actions attached. Check is a lifecycle task....

This in-depth comparison helps you decide whether to use the Maven or Gradle build tool. Whatever your use case, you’ll find the answers here to quickly enable you to pick the right tool to support your project’s growth. Overview Both Maven and Gradle fall into the category of build tools. They’re designed to automate the work involved to take your application’s source code and transform it into an artifact to be published....

You might be surprised how much difference Gradle can make compared to Maven in terms of developer productivity. To show you how, here are the top 5 benefits of using Gradle, each with a full comparison with Maven. 1. Much faster Gradle is faster. A lot faster. This is a massive productivity boost to developers building projects many times each day. Let’s be specific about what faster means, by comparing Maven and Gradle’s performance in a real project....