Introduction

Welcome to the June 2021 Gradle Build Tool newsletter.

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

From the Community

Blog Posts

• Actual Footage of Different Kinds of Gradle Configurations - explains Gradle’s dependency configurations
• A Crash Course in Classpaths: Run! - explains classpaths in the context of compiling and running JVM and Android apps
• A Problem Was Found with the Configuration of the Gradle 7 Task - explains how to fix potential plugin compatibility issues with Gradle 7
• Turbocharging your Android Gradle Builds Using the Build Cache - demonstrates how to configure and use Gradle build cache
• Using Gradle Enterprise to Detect Configuration Regressions in an Android Gradle Build - describes how to monitor build performance with Gradle Enterprise
• Gradle Dependency License Validation - introduces the licensee plugin for validating licenses of external dependencies and how it’s used at CashApp

Tutorials and guides

• Working with Gradle - explains how to work with Gradle in Intellij IDEA (from JetBrains)

Podcasts

• The Developers’ Bakery #12 - discusses refreshVersions Gradle plugin for keeping external dependencies up-to-date

Gradle Releases

Gradle 7.1

Gradle 7.1 release makes Java compilation faster including making the first compilation after fetching from the build cache incremental. This release also makes it easier to configure Groovy, Scala and Antlr sourcesets in Kotlin DSL. See release notes for details.

Gradle Enterprise 2021.2

Gradle Enterprise 2021.2 makes auto scaling Test Distribution agents much more convenient, captures and visualizes test logging output for Maven builds, identifies the task critical path for Gradle builds, and more. See release notes for details.

Other Releases

Kotlin 1.5.20

Kotlin 1.5.20 brings several performance improvements for Gradle users including parallel execution of Kotlin compilation tasks without an additional flag, faster IDE sync of Kotlin projects, and faster kapt in certain cases. Kotlin/JS is now also compatible with Gradle’s configuration cache. See release notes and full list of closed issues 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. We are looking for software engineers, solution engineers and also a developer advocate and developer productivity engineer.

See the Gradle Training webpage for an up-to-date list of all upcoming educational and training events.

If you have some news you’d like us to share in the next issue, use #gradle on Twitter or send us an email with the details to newsletter@gradle.com.

Until next time!

—The Gradle Build Tool Team