How to set up repository authentication with Gradle

• Setting up repository authentication with Gradle

In the previous post I showed you how to move a project from maven to Gradle. One of the issues I had was that authenticated repositories no longer worked (in Maven they were using the setting.xml file in the .m2 directory). I'm sure this is standard knowledge for any Gradle user but it took a little figuring out as a Maven user.

First create a file called gradle.properties and same it into the same directory as your build.gradle. It doesn't have to live there but it's a good place to start. See more here.

Add the following lines to the gradle.properties file:

repoUser=user123

repoPassword=123abc

Then in your build.gradle add the following:

repositories {

    maven {

        credentials {

            username repoUser

            password repoPassword

        }

        url "http://nexus........."

    }

}

Moving from Maven to Gradle in under 5 minutes

• How to move a project from Maven to Gradle

For mainly historic reasons I've been a heavy Maven users for all my projects and not really dipped more than a toe into the 'holy grail' that is Gradle.

So I was pleased to be set the challenge by one of my clients, that as part of the delivery they wanted the code moved from Maven to Gradle.

After a bit of research (as well as some trial and error) I can take you through the steps that should be able to convert a Maven project to Gradle in about 5 minutes. (Note I've used IntelliJ but I would imagine this should be pretty much the same on any other IDE - or even if you're not using an IDE). 

1. Install Gradle on your machine.  You can get the software from here.
2. Check out (or copy) your code into a new directory.  This is not strictly necessary but it makes things cleaner.
3. cd into the directory that contains your pom.xml
4. Run the command: run gradle init.  This will create a new gradle project creating a build.gradle file based on your pom.xml.  (Note this is an incubator feature but it seems to work quite well).
5. Create a new IntelliJ project as follows:  File -> New -> Project From Existing Sources. Select the build.gradle file you created in the previous step and choose the following defaults as in this dialog:

That's really all there is to it. A brand new Gradle project.

Here are some additional notes I found useful as a Gradle newbie:

1. If you want to include files you already have in your existing Maven .m2 repo add mavenLocal() as a dependency.
2. Your dependencies get downloaded here (the equivalent of .m2): 
   .gradle/caches/modules-2/files-2.1
3. This is the correct way to define jdk compatibility:def javaVersion = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8;sourceCompatibility = javaVersion;targetCompatibility = javaVersion;
4. To see the results of your tests as they are running add this method to your build.gradletest { testLogging {     events "started", "passed", "skipped", "failed", "standardOut", "standardError" }}
5. If you have repositories that need authentication see here.