Table of Contents

About

A build process execute a graph of tasks.

Task may just be:

Example

tasks.register("Hello") {
  println("Hello")
}

gradlew Hello

Hello

Model

Tasks themselves consist of:

  • Actions — pieces of work that do something, like copy files or compile source
  • Inputs — values, files and directories that the actions use or operate on
  • Outputs — files and directories that the actions modify or generate

A task should never call another task.

Tasks should define inputs and outputs to get the performance benefits of incremental build functionality.

Output

When declaring the outputs of a task, make sure that the directory for writing outputs is unique among all the tasks in your project.

Intermingling or overwriting output files produced by different tasks compromises up-to-date checking causing slower builds. In turn, these filesystem changes may prevent Gradle’s build cache from properly identifying and caching what would otherwise be cacheable tasks.

Management

Create

Task are provided by:

Built-in

Example for copy 

task copy(type: Copy, group: "Custom", description: "Copies sources to the dest directory") {
    from "src"
    into "dest"
}

Register

Kotlin 

tasks.register("logInfo") {
  logging.captureStandardOutput(LogLevel.INFO)
  doFirst {
    println("A task message which is logged at INFO level")
  }
}

Default

task echo(description: 'Default task') << {
    println 'Hello'
}
defaultTasks 'echo'

List

  • In one project directory
gradlew tasks 
# or
gradlew tasks --all

gradle :services:webservice:tasks

Property

tasks.withType(JavaCompile) {
        options.encoding = 'UTF-8'
}
  • Lookup
val testTask =  tasks.getByName<Test>("test");
testTask.failFast = true;
  • Or declarative
tasks.test {
   failFast = true;
}

Execute

gradle -q taskName

where:

  • -q stands for quiet

Exclude

  • Specify a task to be excluded from execution.
gradle [-x|--exclude-task]

Cache

Ignore previously cached task results. 

gradle --rerun-tasks

Help

gradlew help --task <task>

Disable

Run the builds with all task actions disabled. 

gradle [-m|--dry-run]

Dependency

https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/tutorial_using_tasks.html#sec:task_dependencies 

tasks.register("hello") {
    doLast {
        println("Hello world!")
    }
}
tasks.register("intro") {
    dependsOn("hello")
    doLast {
        println("I'm Gradle")
    }
}

Cache

See Gradle - Cache (.gradle)