Introduction

Welcome to the July 2023 Gradle Build Tool newsletter.

This edition covers recent content from the community and the latest news from the Gradle team, including the 8.2 release.

From the Community

Blog Posts

• History of Gradle Delegation Process in IntelliJ IDEA (from JetBrains) - A brief historical overview of the integration with Gradle in IntelliJ IDEA

Videos

• How Netflix Built a Distributed Testing Platform - This presentation from last year’s DPE Summit describes how Netflix reduced their build and test times from 62 minutes to just 5 minutes for hundreds of projects–built both locally and on CI–using Gradle Enterprise Test Distribution.

From the Gradle Team

Gradle 8.2

Gradle 8.2 has been released. As always, we recommend that users upgrade to the latest patch, version 8.2.1 at the time of publishing.

This release brings another series of substantial improvements to the Kotlin DSL, including new reference documentation, and simple property assignment with the = operator enabled by default.

This release also brings a number of usability and performance improvements, including a significant reduction in memory consumption during the sync process.

See the release notes for details.

Simpler Kotlin DSL Property Assignment

One of the most notable improvements in Gradle 8.2 is the simpler way to assign values with lazy properties using the = operator.

This highly requested feature is now enabled by default. Making it work was not a trivial task, as it required close collaboration with JetBrains to deliver the first externally contributed Kotlin language feature.

This blog post from the engineering team describes lazy property assignment and shares more details on the collaboration.

Plugin Portal Outage Followup

Gradle Plugin Portal suffered a major outage recently because JCenter suddenly stopped serving files directly and redirected all requests to Maven Central.

This blog post describes the event in detail, what you can do to limit the impact on your build, and what we’re planning to do to eliminate the risk of related outages in the future.

Seven Reasons You Should Not Ignore Flaky Tests

Ignoring flaky tests can ultimately result in the development of a lower-quality product, fraught with uncaught bugs.

This blog post from Trisha Gee explains why you should care about flaky tests, and what you can do to better diagnose failures and increase your team’s confidence in tests.

Gradle Inc. Wins CODiE Award for ‘Most Innovative Tech Company of 2023’

Gradle Inc. was recently named the “Most Innovative Tech Company of 2023” as part of the 38th annual Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) CODiE Awards.

The CODiE Awards program honors the best software companies and products for their outstanding track records of innovation and ability to achieve their visions.

Careers

If you share our passion for developer productivity and tooling, consider joining the globally distributed Gradle team—now in 30 countries!

The Gradle Build Tool team has the following open positions:

• Developer Advocate
• Security Software Engineer
• Developer Productivity Engineer

Check out all Gradle Inc. job openings here: gradle.com/careers

Upcoming Events with Gradle

Check out our free, instructor-led training courses as well as upcoming presentations and keynotes from the globe-trotting Gradle team:

July 20, 6am - 9:15am PT – Online Training: Android Apps with Gradle Build Tool - EMEA

July 25, 9am - 1:30pm PT – Online Training: Introduction to Gradle Build Tool

July 26, 9am - 12:15pm PT – Online Training: Android Apps with Gradle Build Tool

August 1, 9am - 11:30am PT - Online Training: Introduction to Gradle Build Tool for Developers

August 2, 9am - 11:30am PT - Online Training: Introduction to Gradle Build Tool for Build Engineers

August 8, 9am - 11:30am PT - Online Training: Gradle Build Tool Configuration Organization

August 10, 9am - 10am PT - Online Training: Gradle Enterprise for Developers

August 15, 9am - 10am PT - Online Training: Gradle Enterprise for Productivity Engineers

August 16, 1am - 3am PT - Online Training: Incremental Builds and Build Caching - EMEA

August 17, 1am - 4am PT - Online Training: Gradle Build Cache Deep Dive - EMEA

August 21-23, Industry Event: SpringOne - Las Vegas, Nevada

August 22, 1am - 4am PT - Online Training: Android Apps with Gradle Build Tool - EMEA

August 24, 9am - 10am PT - Webcast: Improving Developer Experience with Build Scans

August 29, 9am - 10am PT - Online Training: Managing Test Failures and Flakiness with Gradle Enterprise

August 30, 9am - 12pm PT - Online Training: Maven Build Cache Deep Dive

August 31, 9am - 10am PT - Webcast: Maintain Build Cache Across Many Projects

September 11-14, Industry Event: Scala Days - Madrid, Spain

September 13, Industry Event: Swamp Up - San Jose, CA

September 13-14, Industry Event: DevOps World - New York, New York

September 14-15, Industry Event: Droidcon - New York, New York

September 20-21, Gradle-Hosted Event: DPE Summit - San Francisco, California

September 22-24, Industry Event: NFJS - Boston, Massachusetts

September 27, Industry Event: DevOpsWorld - Chicago, Illinois