Hi, The 1.0-milestone-3 release includes a new API, called the tooling API, which you can use for embedding Gradle. This API allows you to execute and monitor builds, and to query Gradle about the details of a build. It does so in a version independent way, so that you can use the same API to work with different versions of Gradle. The main audience for this API is IDE, CI server, and other UI authors. However, it is open for anyone who needs to embed Gradle in their application.
So, what does this API give you? Here are some features: * You can query Gradle for the details of a build, including the project hierarchy and the project dependencies, external dependencies (including source and javadoc jars), source directories and tasks of each project. * You can execute a build, and listen to stdout and stderr logging and progress (ie the stuff shown in the 'status bar' when you run on the command line). * Gradle wrapper aware and, by default, uses the same Gradle version as that used when you run on the command-line. * Downloads and installs the appropriate Gradle version, similar to the wrapper. * Lightweight implementation, with only a small number of dependencies. It is also a well-behaved library, and makes no assumptions about your classloader structure or logging configuration. This makes the API easy to bundle in your application. * Integrated with the daemon, and will use it where appropriate, for fast builds which don't pollute the JVM which your application is running in. We plan to add a bunch more UI and IDE friendly features. Some examples: * Performance. The API gives us the opportunity to do lots of caching, static analysis and preemptive work, to make things faster for the user. Given that this is the first cut of the API, the implementation does not take advantage of this yet. * Better progress monitoring and build cancellation. For example, allowing test execution to be monitored. * Notifications when things in the build change, so that UIs and models can be updated. * Validating and prompting for user supplied configuration. * Prompting for and managing user credentials. This API is now the official and recommended way to embed Gradle. This means that the existing APIs, namely GradleLauncher and the open API (UIFactory and friends), are now deprecated and will be removed in future versions of Gradle. This will almost certainly happen before Gradle 1.0 is released. And for the GradleLauncher API, this might happen before the next milestone. If you happen to use one of the above APIs, please consider changing your application to use the tooling API instead. You can find some samples in $gradleHome/samples/toolingApi. The build files for these samples show the appropriate repository configuration and dependency declarations you'll need in order to use it. See also the Javadoc for GradleConnector, which is the main entry point of the API: http://gradle.org/current/docs/javadoc/org/gradle/tooling/GradleConnector.html The tooling API currently supports only Gradle 1.0-milestone-3. It will also support any future releases of Gradle. At this stage, we are not planning to add any support for older Gradle releases. That is, you won't be able to use the tooling API to execute a build that needs Gradle 0.9, for example. However, if there's a convincing reason, we can look at adding support for some earlier Gradle releases. -- Adam Murdoch Gradle Co-founder http://www.gradle.org VP of Engineering, Gradleware Inc. - Gradle Training, Support, Consulting http://www.gradleware.com
