Hi all, I’ve got a gradle task that I would like to distribute. It’s just a task that allow to run a...

# gradle

[arnaud.giuliani]

Hi all, I’ve got a gradle task that I would like to distribute. It’s just a task that allow to run a category of test:

task checkModules(type: Test) {
    testLogging {
        showStandardStreams = true
    }
    useJUnit {
        includeCategories 'org.koin.test.category.CheckModuleTest'
    }
}

It’s for a library. Can I distribute it as a Gradle plugin?

[mbonnin]

You mean put it on the Gradle Plugin Portal ? Of course but you'll have to package it as a jar, give it a plugin id, etc, there's some boilerplate

[arnaud.giuliani]

yes, but that’s ok. I want to allow to run easily this CheckModuleTest category without asking users to write this task

[mbonnin]

This page says you can do it in 12 minutes 🙂 https://guides.gradle.org/publishing-plugins-to-gradle-plugin-portal/

[arnaud.giuliani]

cool, thanks

[arnaud.giuliani]

and then I need to make a Gradle plugin project?

[arnaud.giuliani]

(to export it as a jar)

[mbonnin]

Yes, you'll need a complete gradle project (hence the boilerplate) which applies these plugins:

plugins {
    id 'java-gradle-plugin' 
    id 'com.gradle.plugin-publish' version '0.10.1' 
}

[mbonnin]

The java-gradle-plugin will generate the jar and com.gradle.plugin-publish will handle publication

[mbonnin]

Alternatively, you could just host your snippet as a gist and tell users to apply(from = check-modules-task.build.gradle)

[mbonnin]

For just a few lines, that might be easier

[arnaud.giuliani]

this is for a library, will be better to have the complete stuff then 🙂

[arnaud.giuliani]

The task I have written above can be exported with this kind of stuff then? https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/custom_plugins.html

[mbonnin]

If you want full plugin support, that's the "A standalone project" section in this link

[arnaud.giuliani]

ok, thanks 👍

[mbonnin]

I was just checking and apparently, users can also apply plugins from a url so if you were to host your snippet on github, you could just ask your users to do

apply(from: uri("<https://raw.github.com/username/check-modules-gradle>"))

I think that would work and would be much faster.

[mbonnin]

But the "standalone project" will give you full flexibility

[arnaud.giuliani]

yeah, this is a convenient way to go fast 🙂

[arnaud.giuliani]

or even host this snippet on a website? like

apply(from: uri("<https://insert-koin.io/check-modules-gradle>"))

[arnaud.giuliani]

could be interesting 👍

[arnaud.giuliani]

even if the state of the art would suggest to have a standalone plugin project 😛

[arnaud.giuliani]

thanks for your answers

[mbonnin]

Yep, I've never done it but documentation says that that other schemes that file:// are supported.