Introduction

Welcome to the April 2021 Gradle Build Tool newsletter.

This issue covers news from the community and the 7.0 release of Gradle Build Tool.

From the Community

Blog Posts

• Gradle 7.0 Improves Incremental Builds, Backs Java 16 - summarizes the improvements in the recently released Gradle 7.0 (from InfoWorld)
• Simplified Version Management with Gradle 7 - discusses various patterns for sharing dependency versions in multi-project builds and shows how to use the new version catalog feature preview for this purpose in Gradle 7.0
• Frequently Asked Questions About Version Catalogs - answers common questions about the new version catalog feature preview
• Centralized Dependency Management Using Gradle Version Catalogs - discusses the benefits of the new version catalog feature preview and shows how to use it
• Abusing Gradle’s Class Loader Hierarchy for Fun and Profit - describes a technique for monkey patching Gradle plugins
• How to Automatically Check Dependency Licenses in Gradle Projects Using Gradle License Report - describes how to make the build fail automatically when a dependency with a disallowed license is added
• Lock your Dagger in Gradle Modules - describes now to encapsulate Dagger components with Gradle’s implementation configuration
• Caching in the Android Build Process - explains incrementality and caching in Gradle and Android Studio
• 10 Ideas to Improve Your Gradle Build Times Part I - shares tips on improving Gradle build times for Android and non-Android projects
• 10 Ideas to Improve Your Gradle Build Times Part II - shares additional tips on improving Gradle build times
• Improve your Gradle Build Times by Disabling Plugins - demonstrates how to disable specific plugins on demand in order to improve Gradle build times
• 3 Tips to Configure the Gradle Wrapper & Distribution - describes how to set up Gradle Wrapper and verify its integrity

Gradle Releases

Gradle 7.0

The new major release of Gradle is out!

This release enables file system watching by default to make your incremental builds faster, expands support for building projects with Java 16, and adds support for building on Macs using Apple Silicon processors (such as M1). This release also introduces a feature preview for centralized dependency versions.

See also the what’s new page highlighting the most important changes since Gradle 6.

Other Releases

IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1

IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1 has been released. It provides support for version 2 of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2) so that you can work with Gradle projects located in WSL 2 in IntelliJ IDEA. See what’s new page for details.

Careers

If you share our passion for developer productivity and tooling, consider joining our globally distributed team and check out our job openings at gradle.com/careers.