A simple Gradle build with example on Ubuntu

Gradle is a higly customizable, powerful and fast build system.
Let's walk through a simple example to configure a project using gradle.

First, download a specific release.

Here are the steps to configure it.

$ mkdir /opt/gradle
$ unzip -d /opt/gradle gradle-7.2-bin.zip
$ ls /opt/gradle/gradle-7.2/
LICENSE  NOTICE  README  bin  init.d  lib  

Add the following line in ~/.bashrc.

export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH 

~/.bashrc file should be updated to get the changes.

$ source ~/.bashrc

Run gradle -version when the above steps are completed.

Let's call the project name blue and scaffold gradle for it.

$ mkdir blue
$ cd blue
$ gradle init

It will ask few to setup the directory strucutre

Select type of project to generate:
 1. basic
 2. application
 3. library
 4. Gradle plugin

For this example, let's select 2. application.

The following question will ask selecting the implementation language which I choose java.

The other options could be selected as per the given default choice.

Let's create a makefile and add some basic gradle commands there.

$ cat makefile
 JAVA_HOME = /opt/sun/jdk15
 GRADLE_HOME = /opt/gradle/gradle-7.2

 GRADLE = $(GRADLE_HOME)/bin/gradle
 clean:
       ./gradlew clean  
 build:
      ./gradlew build
 run:
      ./gradlew run
 test:
      gradle test --tests AppTest 

App.java which is located in app/src/main/java/blue/ is the entry point to the project.
Edit this class and add soem message to it.

package blue;

public class App {
 private String getMessage() { return "My Gradle Project"; } 

 public static void main(String[] args) {
   App app = new App();
   System.out.println(app.getMessage());
 }
}

Now, run the project.

$ make build
$ make run

The sample message should be printed in the console if the build is successful.

Download this sample.