August 2024

Gradle 9.0 Webinar

Join us on September 19 for the webinar with Louis Jacomet, Gradle 9 is coming: What’s in it for developers. Louis will share planned updates on our roadmap towards this major release and dive into key initiatives like Gradle scalability and developer experience.

From the Community

Blog Posts and Videos

• Supercharge Your Builds with the Gradle Analytics Plugin by Mehdi Janbarari
• Developing a Custom Gradle Plugin for Formatting and Static Analysis by Marko Pavičić
• Ultimate Iteration Speeds with Gradle Configuration Cache by Aurimas Liutikas at Droidcon
• Bootiful Podcast on Gradle Scalability, Caching, and Upcoming features with Eric Haag and Josh Long
• Aggregating Artifacts and Relocatable Input Files - two new Gradle brainteasers by Martin Bonnin

New Releases

• IntelliJ Platform Gradle Plugin 2.0 for developing plugins for IntelliJ-based IDEs is out! Read the announcement by its developer, Jakub Chrzanowski.
• Shadow Plugin has a new home in the GradleUp organization on GitHub, and it also got a new maintainer - Zongle Wang. A new 8.3.0 release changes the plugin ID and Maven coordinates - Changelog.
• Java Module Dependencies Plugin v1.7 now allows configuring the location of subprojects with Java Modules in the settings.gradle file. With this, Java projects can define dependencies in module-info.java files. Read More.
• Gradle Build Server got a 0.3.0 release with support for Java 22, test execution, and better support for Composite Builds - Changelog.

Ecosystem Updates

• JFrog has completed the JCenter shutdown. We had to apply some extra patches in mid-July, but the Gradle ecosystem is otherwise stable. If you think you have been affected, follow the guidelines in our blog post.
• GradleUp—a volunteer-driven umbrella GitHub organization focused on improving the Java, Kotlin, and Android developer experience with Gradle Build Tool—has a new website! Check it out on gradleup.com.

From the Gradle Team

Gradle Build Tool 8.10 Release

We’re excited to introduce the 8.10 release of Gradle, which can now run on Java 23! This release also introduces performance and reporting improvements to the configuration cache, including a significant reduction in the cache file size thanks to string deduplication and accelerated cache loading times. There are also updates to build authoring APIs.

Our friends at Google have already tried out the new release for AndroidX and reported a massive 3.75x size reduction of configuration cache in the builds. At some cost for storing time spent in data serialization, the changes improved loading time, which happens multiple times during configuration cache hits. Many thanks to Gradle Fellow Aurimas Liutikas for sharing the results! If you’re curious, you can explore the configuration cache savings on the public Develocity instance for the AndroidX project, sponsored by Gradle as a part of its open-source support program.

The Gradle Build Tool 8.10 release notes are available here. The Develocity 2024.2 release also added API for retrieving the configuration cache information, see the changelog here.

Gradle Build Tool 8.9 Release Video

We released Gradle Build Tool 8.9 in July, and we’ve just published the video summary on our official @GradleInc channel on YouTube. The release video provides an overview of the new functionality by the Gradle engineering team members and external contributors.

Learn more about the changes in the release notes. The 8.10 video is coming up soon!

Gradle Build Tool Developer Survey

The Gradle team is committed to enhancing developer experience, and your feedback is crucial in helping us prioritize our efforts. We invite you to participate in the survey. Those who provide the most insightful responses will receive special edition Gradle swag or gift cards!

Declarative Gradle Early Access

We need your feedback! Last month, we announced the Early Access Preview (EAP) of Declarative Gradle. As part of this preview, we published several project samples that are ready for feedback. These include Java, Kotlin, and Android application samples and a port of the popular Now in Android application.

Try out these samples and share your insights. You can fill out the feedback form here or leave your thoughts in the #declarative-gradle channel on the Gradle Community Slack.

System Resource Usage Observability in Develocity 2024.2

In the 2024.2 release, Develocity and Gradle Build Scan introduced support for resource usage observability. This feature reports system resource usage – CPU, disk, memory, and network – for Gradle and other supported tools. Additionally, the top 5 CPU-consuming processes are captured so that you can analyze the environment’s impact on the build. This enables troubleshooting and optimization of resource utilization at the Gradle task level.

Read more about the Develocity 2024.2 release here.

Develocity 2024 - Reporting and Visualization Enhancements

With this release, the Develocity Reporting and Visualization toolchain has been updated with additional data and out-of-the-box reports, including overviews of Gradle Build Tool plugins applied in the projects and builds.

Read more about the Develocity 2024.2 release here.

Gradle Will Participate in Hacktoberfest 2024!

In October, Gradle will participate in Hacktoberfest 2024! It’s one of the largest online hackathons, and we’re looking forward to offering a few featured projects, hosting online events for newcomer open-source contributors, and sending custom Gradle goodies for those who contribute to the projects. Here are a few projects we have in mind for the event:

• Making the Gradle plugins compatible with Gradle Configuration Cache (list of plugin statuses on GitHub)
• Experimenting with Declarative Gradle and sharing feedback
• Contributing new Gradle solutions to Gradle Cookbook and providing plugin documentation improvements
• Learning Gradle Build Tool with free courses on DPE University

Subscribe on this page to receive news about Hacktoberfest, featured projects, and any related Gradle events.

Upcoming Events

Check out Gradle’s upcoming community and hosted events. Say hi to us at our booth and catch our speaking slots! We hope to see you at an event soon.

• September 4-5, Community Event - JavaZone
• September 9-11, Community Event - SwampUp
• September 19, Webinar - Gradle 9 is coming: What’s in it for developers? with Louis Jacomet
• September 19-20, Community Event - droidcon New York. Inaki Villar and Nelson Osacky will speak about Declarative Gradle on Android.
• September 24-25, Hosted Event - DPE Summit - Discover the only event dedicated to the practice of Developer Productivity Engineering (DPE) and Developer Experience (DX).
• September 30-October 1, Community Event - Open Source in Finance Forum
• October 4-6, Community Event - Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit. Bálint Hegyi from the Build Tool IDE Experience team will be representing Gradle and the Kotlin Foundation.
• October 7-11, Community Event - Devoxx Belgium. Meet the Gradle Build Tool team there. Lous Jacomet and Alex Semin will also present on Gradle 9, and the upcoming features there.
• October 8-11, Community Event - KCD Austria. Oleg Nenashev will speak on modern build tool observability with Gradle, OpenTelemetry, Develocity, and Quarkus.
• November 5-7 and 12-14, Community Event - API: WORLD in Santa Clara and Online. Laura Kassovic, Baruch Sadogursky, and Oleg Nenashev will speak about OpenAPI extensibility and developer productivity.

The End

With the summer coming to an end and many Java/Kotlin/Android events in September, expect a lot more Gradle Build Tools news in the next edition. Make sure to try out Gradle Build Scan and learn more about Gradle on DPE University. Cya next month!

If you have some news you’d like us to share in the next issue, let us know using the #community-news channel on the Gradle Community Slack or by mentioning @Gradle on Twitter/X.

Until next time!
— The Gradle Team

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