Build Init Plugin

Table of Contents

Tasks
What to set up
Build init types

The Build Init plugin is currently incubating. Please be aware that the DSL and other configuration may change in later Gradle versions.

The Gradle Build Init plugin can be used to bootstrap the process of creating a new Gradle build. It supports creating brand new projects of different types as well as converting existing builds (e.g. An Apache Maven build) to be Gradle builds.

Gradle plugins typically need to be applied to a project before they can be used (see the section called “Using plugins”). The Build Init plugin is an automatically applied plugin, which means you do not need to apply it explicitly. To use the plugin, simply execute the task named init where you would like to create the Gradle build. There is no need to create a “stub” build.gradle file in order to apply the plugin.

It also leverages the wrapper task to generate the Gradle Wrapper files for the project.

Tasks

The plugin adds the following tasks to the project:

Build Init plugin - tasks

Task name	Depends on	Type	Description
`init`	`wrapper`	`InitBuild`	Generates a Gradle project.
`wrapper`	-	`Wrapper`	Generates Gradle wrapper files.

What to set up

The init supports different build setup types. The type is specified by supplying a --type argument value. For example, to create a Java library project simply execute: gradle init --type java-library.

If a --type parameter is not supplied, Gradle will attempt to infer the type from the environment. For example, it will infer a type value of “pom” if it finds a pom.xml to convert to a Gradle build.

If the type could not be inferred, the type “basic” will be used.

The init plugin also supports generating build scripts using either the Gradle Groovy DSL or the Gradle Kotlin DSL. The build script DSL to use defaults to the Groovy DSL and is specified by supplying a --dsl argument value. For example, to create a Java library project with Kotlin DSL build scripts simply execute: gradle init --type java-library --dsl kotlin.

All build setup types include the setup of the Gradle Wrapper.

Note that the migration from Maven builds only supports the Groovy DSL for generated build scripts.

Build init types

As this plugin is currently incubating, only a few build init types are currently supported. More types will be added in future Gradle releases.

“`pom`” (Maven conversion)

The “pom” type can be used to convert an Apache Maven build to a Gradle build. This works by converting the POM to one or more Gradle files. It is only able to be used if there is a valid “pom.xml” file in the directory that the init task is invoked in or, if invoked via the “-p” command line option, in the specified project directory. This “pom” type will be automatically inferred if such a file exists.

The Maven conversion implementation was inspired by the maven2gradle tool that was originally developed by Gradle community members.

The conversion process has the following features:

Uses effective POM and effective settings (support for POM inheritance, dependency management, properties)
Supports both single module and multimodule projects
Supports custom module names (that differ from directory names)
Generates general metadata - id, description and version
Applies maven, java and war plugins (as needed)
Supports packaging war projects as jars if needed
Generates dependencies (both external and inter-module)
Generates download repositories (inc. local Maven repository)
Adjusts Java compiler settings
Supports packaging of sources and tests
Supports TestNG runner
Generates global exclusions from Maven enforcer plugin settings