Gradle Fundamentals

This course is an introduction to Gradle. Gradle is a Java tool that manages your build environment; it is the new-ish kid on the block of Java build tools and is the tool that Android Studio uses to build Android applications. Gradle lets you compile and test your code, create jars and wars for your applications, generate Javadoc, and much, much more. It is highly and easily extendable. While Gradle itself is written in Java, it provides a DSL that’s written in Groovy in which you write the configuration scripts. This course covers the basics of Gradle, from writing tasks in the DSL, through running Java builds and unit testing, on to ways to extend the build language itself. Gradle does not provide its own dependency management system but instead can use Maven’s or Ivy’s; we see how to configure and use both of those systems. Finally the class looks at the Gradle 'wrapper', a mechanism to ensure your developers always use the correct version of Gradle.