Ytukyg

We are migrating from Ant to Gradle. In the starting Gradle looked promising, when I started migrating targets from Ant to Gradle, facing similar issues, earlier having with Ant.

The Ant Build Flow looks like -

We have a Java application - Ant used to clean, compile and build jar of the project.

Next we have few targets to copy built jar and some other resources files to windows server.Its just a windows server not a nexus like repo.

These copy targets are release based(internally using macrodefs) - if alpha, it has to copy to different folder and for stable release different folder.

Another macrodef was to just backup the existing files present in server to a backup folder before copying new files there.

Migrating to Gradle-
I liked the way Gradle does the tasks of clean, compile and build. I am using Java plugin for this.

I am facing issues in next tasks to copy files to windows server and taking backup of old files before copying new files.

In Gradle I created few custom tasks like copyJarAlpha, copyJarStable,backupJarAlpha,backupJarStable etc..

Internally they are doing the same thing just copying files from source to destination and some print statements. But it looks repetitive. I was looking for ways like macrodef in ant.

task deployAlpha {



doFirst {

    isJenkinsAvailable(deployDirAlpha)

}



doFirst {

    if(isDeployLibsTaskRequired(outputDir,deployDirAlpha)) {

        tasks.findByName('deployLibsAlpha').execute()

    }

}



doLast {

    println "Deploying corejar jar to : ${deployDirAlpha}"

    copy {

        from "${outputDir}/${corejar}"

        into "${deployDirAlpha}"

    }

    println "Deploying evan-core jar to : ${deployDirAlpha}/lib"

    copy {

        from "${externalLibsDir}/core2.jar"

        into "${deployDirAlpha}/lib"

    }

    println "Deploying test resource files to : ${deployDirAlpha}"

    copy {

        from "./test-resources/logback-test.xml", "./test-resources/JUnit-TestSuiteResults.xsl"

        into "${deployDirAlpha}"

    }

}

}

I have similar snippets at few places. Its not looking nice.

Is there any way we can reuse methods/functions in gradle? or I am assuming wrong things here.. Or I am trying to use gradle for things its not inteded for? What could be the best way to accomplish these tasks of copying and backing up files if not using custom tasks in gradle?

Here's a couple of options.

Create a plugin (See writing custom plugins)

public class MyPlugin implements Plugin<Project> {

    void apply(Project project) {

        project.with {

            apply plugin: 'x' 

            dependencies {...}

            task deployAlpha{...}

        }

     }

} 

Usage

apply plugin: MyPlugin 

Or a script plugin

apply from: 'path/to/script.gradle'

You can also attach functions to domain objects via the ext of a domain object (see ExtraPropertiesExtension)

allprojects {

    ext.doProjectStuff = { String arg -> return "project${arg}"}

    dependencies.ext.doSependenciesStuff = { String arg -> return "dependencies${arg}"}

}

Usage

def foo = doProjectStuff('x')

dependencies {

    def bar = doDependenciesStuff('y')

}