Chapter 53. Initialization Scripts

Gradle provides a powerful mechanism to allow customizing the build based on the current environment. This mechanism also supports tools that wish to integrate with Gradle.

53.1. Basic usage

Initialization scripts (a.k.a. init scripts) are similar to other scripts in Gradle. These scripts, however, are run before the build starts. Here are several possible uses:

  • Set up enterprise-wide configuration, such as where to find custom plugins.

  • Set up properties based on the current environment, such as a developer's machine vs. a continuous integration server.

  • Supply personal information about the user that is required by the build, such as repository or database authentication credentials.

  • Define machine specific details, such as where JDKs are installed.

  • Register build listeners. External tools that wish to listen to Gradle events might find this useful.

  • Register build loggers. You might wish to customise how Gradle logs the events that it generates.

One main limitation of init scripts is that they cannot access classes in the buildSrc project (see Section 52.3, “Build sources in the buildSrc project” for details of this feature).

53.2. Using an init script

There are several ways to use an init script:

  • Specify a file on the command line. The command line option is -I or --init-script followed by the path to the script. The command line option can appear more than once, each time adding another init script.

  • Put a file called init.gradle in the USER_HOME/.gradle/ directory.

  • Put a file that ends with .gradle in the USER_HOME/.gradle/init.d/ directory.

  • Put a file that ends with .gradle in the GRADLE_HOME/init.d/ directory, in the Gradle distribution. This allows you to package up a custom Gradle distribution containing some custom build logic and plugins. You can combine this with the Gradle wrapper as a way to make custom logic available to all builds in your enterprise.

If more than one init script is found they will all be executed, in the order specified above. Scripts in a given directory are executed in alphabetical order. This allows, for example, a tool to specify an init script on the command line and the user to put one in their home directory for defining the environment and both scripts will run when Gradle is executed.

53.3. Writing an init script

Similar to a Gradle build script, an init script is a groovy script. Each init script has a Gradle instance associated with it. Any property reference and method call in the init script will delegate to this Gradle instance.

Each init script also implements the Script interface.

53.3.1. Configuring projects from an init script

You can use an init script to configure the projects in the build. This works in a similar way to configuring projects in a multi-project build. The following sample shows how to perform extra configuration from an init script before the projects are evaluated. This sample uses this feature to configure an extra repository to be used only for certain environments.

Example 53.1. Using init script to perform extra configuration before projects are evaluated

build.gradle

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

task showRepos << {
    println "All repos:"
    println repositories.collect { it.name }
}

init.gradle

allprojects {
    repositories {
        mavenLocal()
    }
}

Output of gradle --init-script init.gradle -q showRepos

> gradle --init-script init.gradle -q showRepos
All repos:
[MavenLocal, MavenRepo]

53.4. External dependencies for the init script

In Section 52.5, “External dependencies for the build script” is was explained how to add external dependencies to a build script. Init scripts can similarly have external dependencies defined. You do this using the initscript() method, passing in a closure which declares the init script classpath.

Example 53.2. Declaring external dependencies for an init script

init.gradle

initscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath group: 'org.apache.commons', name: 'commons-math', version: '2.0'
    }
}

The closure passed to the initscript() method configures a ScriptHandler instance. You declare the init script classpath by adding dependencies to the classpath configuration. This is the same way you declare, for example, the Java compilation classpath. You can use any of the dependency types described in Section 43.4, “How to declare your dependencies”, except project dependencies.

Having declared the init script classpath, you can use the classes in your init script as you would any other classes on the classpath. The following example adds to the previous example, and uses classes from the init script classpath.

Example 53.3. An init script with external dependencies

init.gradle

import org.apache.commons.math.fraction.Fraction

initscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath group: 'org.apache.commons', name: 'commons-math', version: '2.0'
    }
}

println Fraction.ONE_FIFTH.multiply(2)

Output of gradle --init-script init.gradle -q doNothing

> gradle --init-script init.gradle -q doNothing
2 / 5