Introduction

Welcome to the September 2023 Gradle Build Tool newsletter.

This edition covers recent content from the community and new blog posts from the Gradle Team.

From the Community

Blog Posts

• Gradle Convention Plugins: A Powerful Tool for Reusing Build Configuration - How to create convention plugins using Kotlin classes to share common build logic.
• Keeping Your Gradle Wrappers Up-to-Date: Automated PRs on Github - Keep your Gradle wrapper automatically up-to-date using a GitHub Action.
• KSP in Android Projects - Kotlin’s KSP annotation processor, now with Dagger support, is ready to be used as an alternative to kapt for improved performance in Android projects.
• Composite Builds with Git Submodules - How to extract a subproject from a monorepo and continue using it without going through the publishing process.
• Learn the Gradle basics from an Android developer in this blog series:
  • Demystifying System Properties in Gradle
  • Demystifying Gradle Properties
  • Exploring the Directories and Files Gradle Uses
  • Understanding Init Scripts in Gradle

Videos

• Understanding Gradle #34 – Properties and Providers - Learn the history behind and use cases for the lazy Property API in Gradle.
• Dancing with Elephants: Gradle Tips and Tricks - This presentation from DroidCon has usability tips for Gradle that are applicable for all types of projects, not just Android.

From the Gradle Team

Blog Posts

There are two new articles for advanced Gradle Build Tool users that care about build performance: An In-depth Look at Gradle’s Approach to Faster Compilation and Improvements in the Build Configuration Input Tracking, cover compilation avoidance and configuration cache optimizations, respectively.

For a higher-level discussion about the impact of slow local build times, see Revving Up Remote Work: A Closer Look at Local Build Times.

New Performance Optimization Training

We’re excited to announce the latest addition to our free training journey. The new performance optimization course is ready. The first session is scheduled for next month.

With this addition, the entire training program—covering all major topics for beginner to advanced Gradle users—is ready to go. We look forward to seeing you in upcoming sessions.

Gradle Enterprise 2023.3 Released

Gradle Enterprise 2023.3 brings project-level access control for enforcing organizational information-sharing boundaries, provides dependency downloading build time impact analysis for Gradle and Apache Maven™, adds new insights for sbt users, and is now compatible with Google Cloud Storage and Azure Blob Storage.

See the release notes for details.

Upcoming Trainings and Events with Gradle

Trainings and Events

• September 26-29, Industry Recruiting Event - Grace Hopper

• September 27, Online Training - Dependency Management

• September 27, Online Training - Advanced Dependency Management

• September 27, Industry Event - DevOps World - Chicago

• September 28, Online Webcast - DPE: The Next Big Thing in Software Development

• October 2-6, Industry Event - Devoxx Belgium

• October 7-10, Industry event - Community Over Code (ApacheCon 2023)

• October 11, Online Webcast - Maintain Build Cache Across Many Projects

• October 12, Online Webcast - Improving Developer Experience with Build Scans

• October 13-14, Industry Event - NFJS: Reston, Virginia

• October 15-17, Industry Event - All Things Open

• October 16-19, Industry Event - EclipseCon

• October 17, Online Training - Incremental Builds and Build Caching

• October 18, DPE Lowdown - How Apollo Kotlin does DPE with Gradle Enterprise

• October 18-19, Industry Event - DevOps World: Silicon Valley

• October 18-19, Community Event - Basel One

• October 19, Online Training - Managing Test Failures and Flakiness with Gradle Enterprise

• October 20, Online Training - Gradle Build Cache Deep Dive

• October 20-21, Industry Event - NFJS: Minneapolis

• October 24-25, Industry Event - BazelCon

• October 25, Online Training - Maven Build Cache Deep Dive

• October 26, Online Training - Gradle Build Tool Performance Optimization

• October 26, Industry Event - DevOps World: Singapore

• October 26-27, Industry Event - Droidcon London 2023

• October 31, Online Training - Gradle Enterprise for Productivity Engineers