February 2018

Introduction

Welcome to the February Newsletter!

In this issue, we’ll cover just-released Gradle 4.6 and Gradle Enterprise 2018.1, then deep dive into using the build cache with Kotlin projects.

From the community #

We ❤️ you Gradle community! Thank you for your blog posts and contributions!

• Reproducible Builds in Java — In this post, Maria Camenzuli demonstrates the value of reproducible builds, and explains how to make your Java build reproducible using Gradle.
• Renaming Your Gradle Build Files — Philippe Breault proposes a naming convention for .gradle scripts that makes it obvious which subproject each one configures.
• Dockerizing a Spring Boot application and Integration testing using containers — 2 great blog posts about using Docker with Gradle, by Ben Muschko.
• Setting Up a Microservices Architecture with Spring Boot and Gradle — Akash Bhingole explains and codifies microservices architecture through an example using Spring Boot and Gradle.
• Kotlin + buildSrc for Better Gradle Dependency Management — In this article, Sam Edwards achieves IDE completion for a set of dependencies by declaring Kotlin constants under buildSrc — very clever.

Have a blog post or plugin you’d like to see featured here? Just send us an email with the details to newsletter@gradle.com.

Gradle 4.6 #

Gradle 4.6 is a big release.

• JUnit Platform (aka JUnit 5) Support
• --fail-fast for Test tasks
• Custom command-line flags for custom tasks
• Experimental BOM and optional dependencies support
• Customizable metadata file resolution
• Improved Visual Studio support for multi-project builds
• Kotlin DSL support for init scripts

There is more. We could scarcely fit the highlights into this 53-second video; better to check the Gradle 4.6 release notes.

Gradle Enterprise 2018.1 #

Gradle Enterprise 2018.1 features seamless support for composite builds, a powerful mechanism for combining or splitting Gradle builds.

When using build scan plugin 0.12.1+, you will see:

• Included builds in the project view
• Tasks from included builds in the tasks view
• Which dependencies were substituted by an included build

More details are available in the release notes.

Kotlin Build Caching #

Kotlin 1.2.21 provides support for Gradle’s build cache. You can enable the build cache for your Kotlin projects by following this blog post.

Build caching is particularly effective when a CI instance populates a shared, remote build cache. Community members have written 2 tutorials for doing just that:

• Speed up your Build with Gradle Remote Build Cache
• Using Gradle Build Cache Server

Upcoming online training #

• Mar 13-14: Introduction to Gradle
• Apr 17-20: Advanced Gradle Fundamentals for Java/JVM
• Anytime: Maximizing Developer Productivity with Gradle Enterprise

Until next time!

—The Gradle Build Tool Team

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