Gradle --> Ease - Freedom - Power for your Build

Native Ant build support

Gradle can import Ant build scripts into your project. Gradle integrates deeply with the Ant build. Every Ant target is represented as a Grade task. This task can be further enhanced in your Gradle build script. The integration even works in both ways. You can depend on Gradle tasks in your build.xml. In addition, accessing and modifying Ant properties from your build script is now much easier.

See UG 14 for details.

Declare build script classpath in the build script

You can now declare the classpath to compile and execute a build script in the build script itself. You no longer require a settings.gradle file to specify this classpath. In addition, each build script in a multi-project build can specify its own classpath.

See UG 28.2 for details.

File dependencies

You can now declare dependencies using a collection of Files. This can be a simple alternative to using a repository, or if you want complete control over which files are used for certain dependencies.

See UG 25.3.5 for details.

Retrieving subset of files from a Configuration

The Configuration class now offers a files method to retrieve the files for a subset of the configuration dependencies.

See UG 25.4 for details.

Improved Copy task

The Copy task now provides a rich API for specifying source and destination files, and finer-grained control over file inclusion and exclusion. Also, the Copy task now provides the ability to rename files and filter content as they are copied.

See the Javadoc for the Copy task for more details.

Dry Run

With the -m option you can execute the Gradle build with all task actions disabled. That way you can see what and in which order a particular Gradle build executes.

See UG 9.4 for details.

Embedded Usage

Gradle has improved its API to be easily used in an embedded way. This is not covered in the UG yet. There is just a placeholder chapter: UG 31. Stay tuned for improved documentation on this important issue.

Plugin Listener

Gradle provides now listeners for plugin usage. A build script or other plugins can add such listeners. They get informed about plugins that are already available and as soon as a new plugin comes into use.