Migrating from Ant to Gradle is very easy with the importBuild method from AntBuilder. We only have to add this single line and reference our existing Ant build XML file and all Ant tasks can now be executed as Gradle tasks. We can automatically rename the Ant tasks if we want to avoid task name collisions with Gradle task names. We use a closure argument with the importBuild method and return the new task names. The existing Ant task name is the first argument of the closure.
Let's first create a simple Ant build.xml file:
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In our Asciidoc markup we can include delimited blocks, like sidebars, examples, listings and admonitions. A delimited block is indicated by a balanced pair of delimiter characters. For example a sidebar starts and ends with four asterisk characters (****). If we want to nest another delimited block of the same type we must add an extra delimiter character at the start and end of the nested block. So when we want to nest another sidebar block inside an existing sidebar block we must use five asterisk characters (*****).
In the following example Asciidoc source we have several blocks with nested blocks:
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If we run a Gradle build and one of the tasks fails, the whole build stops immediately. So we have fast feedback of our build status. If we don't want to this and want Gradle to execute all tasks, even though some might have failed, we use the command line option --continue. When we use the --continue command line option Gradle will execute every task where the dependent tasks are not failing. This is also useful in a multi-module project where we might want to build all projects even though some may have failing tests, so we get a complete overview of failed tests for all modules.
In the following Gradle build file we have two tasks. The task failTask throws a TaskExecutionException to purposely fail the task. The successTask will not fail:
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If we use Gradle in a multi-module project we can define project dependencies between modules. Gradle uses the information from the project dependencies to determine which tasks need to be run. For example if module B depends on module A and we want to build module B, Gradle will also build module A for us, because module B depends on it. But if we know for sure that module A is up to date and has not changed, we can also instruct Gradle to skip building module A, when we build module B.
Let's start with the following module structure, where each module depends on the module above it. So module services depends on common and module web depends on services:
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When we define a table in Asciidoctor we might want to span a cell over multiple columns or rows, instead of just a single column or row. We can do this using a cell specifier with the following format: column-span.row-span+. The values for column-span and row-span define the number of columns and rows the cell must span. We put the cell specifier before the pipe symbol (|) in our table definition.
In the following example Asciidoctor markup we have three tables. In the first table we span a cell over 2 columns, the second table spans a cell over 2 rows and in the final table we span a cell over both 2 columns and rows.
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With Asciidoctor we can repeat cell contents if we prefix the cell separator pipe symbol (|) with the number of times we want to repeat the cell followed by an asterisk (*).
In the following example Asciidoctor source file we define two tables and add 2* to cells that we want to repeat two times:
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When we transform our Asciidoc source files to HTML Asciidoctor will print the date and time the document was last updated in the footer. If we want to disable the Last updated text we disable the document attribute last-update-label.
In the following example Asciidoc file we disable the Last update label in the footer:
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Since the latest Grails versions a Grails wrapper is automatically created when we execute the create-app command. If we don't want the wrapper to be created we can use the command argument --skip-wrapper. If later we changed our mind and want the Grails wrapper we can simply run the wrapper command from our Grails application directory.
Let's run the create-app command with the --skip-wrapper argument. If we check the contents of the created directory we see that the wrapper files are not created:
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Normally all Asciidoc files are processed and transformed to output files by Asciidoctor. But if we start the file name with an underscore (_) the file is not transformed to an output file. This is very useful, because we can define some Asciidoc document fragments and include them in other Asciidoc files, but in the output directory the document fragment is not generated.
Let's create two Asciidoc files. One is _attrs.adoc which is a document fragment file that is used in sample.doc:
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To get the current Gradle version we can use the gradleVersion property of the Gradle object. This returns a string value we can use for displaying the values. If we want to compare Gradle versions we can use the GradleVersion object. With this class we can get the current version, but we can also compare Gradle versions. This can be useful in our build scripts if we have functionality based on a Gradle version.
In the following build file we first have a task that uses the gradleVersion of Gradle. Then inside the task we use the static method current of the GradleVersion class. We get an GradleVersion instance and we display different properties from this instance. In the task compareGradleVersion we create a GradleVersion instance with the static version method. We compare multiple GradleVersion objects and have different functionality based on the Gradle version.
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To define a Copy task we specify the files we want to copy and to which directory. This definition is a CopySpec instance. It contains the rules that defines what we want to copy. The archive tasks Jar, Zip and Tar also use a CopySpec instance.
When we create a task of type Copy we get a task object that implements the CopySpec interface. We can use all the methods from this interface to extend our recipe for copying tasks. In the following build file we first define the task website. We use CopySpec methods to configure the task. Then we define a task deploy of type Sync that also implements the CopySpec interface.
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We can change the frames and grid of tables we define in Asciidoctor. We use the frames attribute to change the outside frame of a table. We can choose between topbot for top and bottom, sides for only a frame at the sides of the table, none if we don't want a frame. The default value all create a frame around our table with top, sides and bottom.
To change the inner grid of a table we use the grids table attribute. The default value all displays a grid for columns and rows inside the table. The value cols only displays a grid between columns, value rows display a grid between rows and with value none there will be no grid inside our table.
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