Chapter 19. Standard Gradle plugins

There are a number of plugins included in the Gradle distribution. These are listed below.

19.1. Language plugins

These plugins add support for various languages which can be compiled and executed in the JVM.

Table 19.1. Language plugins

Plugin Id	Automatically applies	Works with	Description
`java`	`java-base`	-	Adds Java compilation, testing and bundling capabilities to a project. It serves as the basis for many of the other Gradle plugins. See also Chapter 6, Java Quickstart.
`groovy`	`java`, `groovy-base`	-	Adds support for building Groovy projects. See also Chapter 7, Groovy Quickstart.
`scala`	`java`, `scala-base`	-	Adds support for building Scala projects.
`antlr`	`java`	-	Adds support for generating parsers using Antlr.

19.2. Integration plugins

These plugins provide some integration with various build and runtime technologies.

Table 19.2. Integration plugins

Plugin Id	Automatically applies	Works with	Description
`announce`	-	-	Publish messages to your favourite platforms, such as Twitter or Growl.
`jetty`	`war`	-	Deploys your web application to a Jetty web container embedded in the build. See also Chapter 8, Web Application Quickstart.
`maven`	-	`java`, `war`	Adds support for deploying artifacts to Maven repositories.
`osgi`	`java-base`	`java`	Adds support for building OSGi bundles.
`war`	`java`	-	Adds support for assembling web application WAR files. See also Chapter 8, Web Application Quickstart.

19.3. Software development plugins

These plugins provide help with your software development process.

Table 19.3. Software development plugins

Plugin Id	Automatically applies	Works with	Description
`code-quality`	`reporting-base`	`java`, `groovy`	Performs code quality checks and generate reports from these checks.
`eclipse`	-	`java`, `groovy`, `scala`, `war`	Generates files that are used by Eclipse IDE, thus making it possible to import the project into Eclipse. See also Chapter 6, Java Quickstart.
`idea`	-	`java`	Generates files that are used by Intellij IDEA IDE, thus making it possible to import the project into IDEA.
`project-report`	`reporting-base`	-	Generates reports containing useful information about your Gradle build.

19.4. Base plugins

These plugins form the basic building blocks which the other plugins are assembled from. They are available for you to use in your build files, and are listed here for completeness. However, be aware that they are not yet considered part of Gradle's public API. As such, these plugins are not documented in the user guide. You might refer to their API documentation to learn more about them.

Table 19.4. Base plugins

Plugin Id	Description
base	Adds the standard lifecycle tasks to the project, plus some shared convention properties.
java-base	Adds the source sets concept to the project. Does not add any particular source sets.
groovy-base	Adds the Groovy source sets concept to the project.
scala-base	Adds the Scala source sets concept to the project.
reporting-base	Adds some shared convention properties to the project, relating to report generation.

19.5. Third party plugins

You can find a list of external plugins on the wiki.