Introduction

Welcome to the August Newsletter!

Summer vacation season is in full swing (for our northpaws anyway, after all, the team spans 5 continents now), but we still have lots of exciting releases and announcements to share with you!

First up, we are delighted to share 3 big updates for Gradle Enterprise:

• Gradle Enterprise 2017.5 is available, and features very fine-grained performance data about your build scripts and plugins, as well as exactly how the build cache was used.
• If you’ve ever wanted to give Gradle Enterprise a try, now is your chance because we’re thrilled to announce free 30-day trials!
• Finally, we’re excited to introduce Gradle Enterprise training: a 2-hour course to demonstrate effective use of the enterprise build cache and build scans.

Next up, Gradle 4.1 is out! Notable improvements include: build cache support for Scala compilation and Scaladoc, a new Worker API to allow plugins to enable safe parallelism by default, parallel composite builds, and improved Java 9 runtime support.

Speaking of Java 9, if you’re excited to create or use Java modules with Gradle, we have just the guide for you. It not only covers producing and consuming Java modules, but also how to run an application, use Java’s ServiceLoader pattern, and provides an experimental plugin that streamlines these things.

Lastly, important news for native developers: we are deprecating Gradle’s rule engine and implementing native support in the “current” model. Soon, native Gradle builds will be able to take advantage of all the goodness available to the JVM ecosystem: Kotlin build scripts, build scans, composite builds, build cache, parallelism… and a path forward for other languages that assemble native software. Read about the state and future of Gradle’s software model.

Until next time!

—The Gradle Build Tool Team

From the Community

• Gradle Java Cross-Compile Plugin — automatic configuration of bootstrap classpath for Java, Groovy, and Kotlin.
• composer-gradle-plugin — new Gradle plugin for interacting with gojuno/composer, a reactive Android instrumentation test runner.
• Android Studio/Gradle Android Plugin 3.0 Beta — the next major version of Android tools is in beta. Preview and share feedback.
• Gradle for DevOps series — a 4-part guide on using Gradle with a focus on DevOps use.
• Building Go with Gradle — an introduction and project to demonstrate building a Go application. Especially useful for those on the JVM who are Go-curious.
• Les Cast Codeurs Podcast (in French) Episodes 145 and 146 — Cédric Champeau talks with Arnaud Héritier and the hosts about Gradle vs. Maven in-depth.

Have something you’d like to see featured here? Just send us an email with the details to newsletter@gradle.com.

Upcoming Free Training

• Aug 30: Maximizing Developer Productivity with Gradle Enterprise
• Sep 05-06: Introduction to Gradle
• Sep 12-13: Einführung in Gradle | Deutsch
• Sep 13: Maximizing Developer Productivity with Gradle Enterprise