Introduction to Gradle

Gradle is an excellent open-source construction tool that is capable of the development of any kind of software. This tool was developed by a gaggle of developers named Hans Dockter, Szczepan Faber Adam Murdoch, Luke Daley, Peter Niederwieser, Daz DeBoer, and Rene Gröschkebefore 13 years before. It is an automation tool that is based on Apache Ant and Apache Maven. This tool is capable of developing applications with industry standards and supports a variety of languages including Groovy, C++, Java, Scala, and C. Gradle also is capable of controlling the development tasks with compilation and packaging to testing, deployment, and publishing. 

History of Gradle

Gradle is the most stable tool when is compared to the Ant and Maven. This tool was released in late 2007 initially as an alternative for predecessors which not only replaced them but also covered the drawbacks for them. Its stable version was released in the year 2019 and now is currently with the latest version 6.6. 

Working of Gradle

The Gradle project when constructed it consists of one or more than one project. These projects consist of tasks. Let us understand the basics of both terms.

1. Gradle Projects: The projects created by Gradle are a web application or a JAR file. These projects are a combination of one or more tasks. These projects are capable to be deployed on the various development life cycles. A Gradle project can be described as building a wall with bricks N in number which can be termed as tasks. 

2. Gradle Tasks: The tasks are the functions which are responsible for a specific role. These tasks are responsible for the creating of classes, Javadoc, or publish archives into the repository which makes the whole development of the Gradle project. These tasks help Gradle decide what input is to be processed for a specific output. Again tasks can be categorized into two different ways: 

• Default Task: These are the predefined tasks that are provided to users by the Gradle. These are provided to users prior which executes when the users do not declare any task on his own. For example, init and wrapper the default tasks provided to users into a Gradle project
• Custom Task: Custom tasks are the tasks that are developed by the developer to perform a user-defined task. These are developed to run a specific role in a project. Let's take a look at how to develop a Custom Task below.

Example: Printing Welcome to GeeksforGeeks! with a task in Gradle.  

build.gradle : task hello
{
    doLast
    {
        println 'Welcome to GeeksforGeeks!'
    }
}

Output: 

> gradle -q hello
Welcome to GeeksforGeeks!

Features of Gradle:

• IDE support: Gradle supports a variety of IDE (Integrated Development Environment). This is a built tool that supports multiple development environments.
• Familiar with Java: Gradle projects need Java environment JVM to run. Features of Gradle are also similar to Java. It also supports the API's which are supported by Java and it is the biggest advantage for developers and it makes it versatile.
• Tasks & Repository Support: Gradle tool supports the features of Ant and Maven build tools. It allows the Ant project to get imported into the Gradle environment. It also supports for the Maven repository to get imported and allows the infrastructure to be used in an existing project.
• Builds: Gradle provides build's for necessary tasks only as if it only compiles the changes which are done previous the last build. It reduces the load time.
• Free and Open Source: Gradle is an open-source built tool that makes it user friendly and it is licensed under ASL (Apache License).
• Multiple Design Build Support: Gradle built tools implements multiple builds supports as while designing a root project it may contain several sub-projects and these projects can have multiple more projects. With the help of Gradle, one can easily build the layout.
• Dependency Management: Gradle provides a powerful dependency management system that makes it easy to manage project dependencies and ensures that all dependencies are resolved and downloaded automatically.
• Scripting: Gradle uses a Groovy-based domain-specific language (DSL) for scripting build configurations, which provides a flexible and intuitive way to define build tasks and workflows.
• Incremental Builds: Gradle supports incremental builds, which means that it only builds the parts of the project that have changed since the last build. This helps to reduce build times and improve productivity.
• Plugins: Gradle provides a rich set of plugins that can be used to extend its functionality and add support for various languages and technologies, including Java, C++, Android, and more.
• Extensibility: Gradle is highly extensible, which means that it can be easily customized and adapted to meet the specific needs of a project. It also provides APIs for integrating with other tools and systems.
• Build Caching: Gradle provides a build caching feature that allows it to cache the results of previous builds and reuse them when building the project again. This helps to further reduce build times and improve performance.
• Test Automation: Gradle supports test automation through its integration with testing frameworks like JUnit, TestNG, and Spock. It also provides support for code coverage analysis and reporting.
• Continuous Integration: Gradle can be easily integrated with popular continuous integration (CI) servers like Jenkins and TeamCity, which makes it a popular choice for CI and build automation.

Pros of using Gradle

• Declarative Builds: The Groovy language of Gradle provides declarative language elements. It checks the previous source code for the changes and then compiles.
• Scalability: Applications created with Gradle are highly scalable as it increases productivity. It allows us to work into model infrastructure which helps the work to get organized.
• Deep API: With the support of this API developers can easily customize the configuration and monitor the execution behavior.
• Free open source: Gradle is an open-source project which has good community support.
• Ease of movement: Gradle has a feature of adapting any project structure. It also supports the creation of plugins, which helps the project development.
• Flexibility: Gradle is highly flexible and can be easily adapted to different project requirements and environments. It can be used for small, medium, and large-scale projects, and can be integrated with various development tools and systems.
• Improved Performance: Gradle provides faster build times and better performance compared to other build tools. It uses a highly optimized build system that can handle large projects with ease.
• Extensibility: Gradle is highly extensible and provides a wide range of plugins that can be used to add functionality to the build process. This makes it easy to integrate with other systems and tools, and to customize the build process to meet specific project needs.
• Dependency Management: Gradle provides a powerful dependency management system that makes it easy to manage project dependencies and ensure that all dependencies are resolved and downloaded automatically.
• Multiple Language Support: Gradle supports multiple programming languages, including Java, Groovy, Kotlin, Scala, and more. This makes it a versatile tool for building different types of applications and projects.
• Incremental Builds: Gradle supports incremental builds, which means that it only builds the parts of the project that have changed since the last build. This helps to reduce build times and improve productivity.
• Community Support: Gradle has a large and active community of developers, which provides a wealth of resources, tutorials, and plugins to help users get started with the tool and solve problems.

Cons of using Gradle

• Technical Expertise: To built tasks with Gradle prior technical skills are required.
• Language Dependency: To use Gradle one needs to have basic knowledge of Groovy or Java language.
• Integration: Adding features is quite complex as it needs to get configured properly before into action.
• Understandability: Gradle documentation is quite comprehensive. It requires the knowledge of terms in prior.
• Complexity: Gradle can be complex to set up and configure, especially for beginners. It requires a good understanding of the tool's architecture, syntax, and configuration files, which can be daunting for new users.
• Build Times: Although Gradle provides faster build times compared to other build tools, it can still take a long time to build large and complex projects. This can impact developer productivity and project timelines.
• Debugging: Debugging issues in Gradle can be challenging, especially when there are multiple dependencies and plugins involved in the build process. This requires a good understanding of the Gradle build lifecycle and configuration files.
• Resource Consumption: Gradle can consume a lot of system resources, especially when building large projects or running multiple builds concurrently. This can slow down other system processes and impact system performance.
• Migration: Migrating from other build tools to Gradle can be a challenging and time-consuming process. This requires a good understanding of both the old and new build systems and the ability to translate build scripts and configurations to Gradle.