Gradle Init Scripts

This is a nice hack taken from Jamie Tanna on her blog.

You can create top-level Gradle tasks using initialization scripts to apply common actions anytime Gradle is ran.

Gradle will look for init scripts (and execute them) in the following order:

1. init.gradle in the $GRADLE_USER_HOME/ directory.
2. *.gradle in the $GRADLE_USER_HOME/init.d/ directory.
3. *.gradle in the $GRADLE_HOME/init.d/ directory, in the Gradle distribution.

You can also invoke init scripts using the --init-script or -I flag:

gradle --init-script init.gradle

See Configuring the Gradle Build Environment for more info.

Here’s an example for a ~/.gradle/init.d/spotless.gradle file:

allprojects {
  afterEvaluate {
    def spotless = tasks.findByName('spotlessApply')
    if (spotless) {
      tasks.withType(JavaCompile) {
        finalizedBy(spotless)
      }
    }
  }
}

Note the use of allprojects.

This above snippet will do the following:

• If Spotless exists in a given project, it will apply the Spotless configuration:
  • after the code has successfully compiled
  • before any other configured tasks

Running tests or other static analysis tools could be applied in a similar fashion.

• java
• gradle