Book excerpt: Master the fundamentals of Gradle using real-world projects with this quick and easy-to-read guide About This Book Write beautiful build scripts for various types of projects effortlessly Become more productive by harnessing the power and elegance of the Gradle DSL Learn how to use Gradle quickly and effectively with this step-by-step guide Who This Book Is For This book is for Java and other JVM-based language developers who want to use Gradle or are already using Gradle on their projects. No prior knowledge of Gradle is required, but some familiarity with build-related terminologies and an understanding of the Java language would help. What You Will Learn Master the Gradle DSL by identifying the building blocks Learn just enough Groovy for Gradle Set up tests and reports for your projects to make them CI ready Create library, stand-alone, and web projects Craft multi-module projects quickly and efficiently Migrate existing projects to a modern Gradle build Extract common build logic into plugins Write builds for languages like Java, Groovy, and Scala In Detail Gradle is an advanced and modern build automation tool. It inherits the best elements of the past generation of build tools, but it also differs and innovates to bring terseness, elegance, simplicity, and the flexibility to build. Right from installing Gradle and writing your first build file to creating a fully-fledged multi-module project build, this book will guide you through its topics in a step-by-step fashion. You will get your hands dirty with a simple Java project built with Gradle and go on to build web applications that are run with Jetty or Tomcat. We take a unique approach towards explaining the DSL using the Gradle API, which makes the DSL more accessible and intuitive. All in all, this book is a concise guide to help you decipher the Gradle build files, covering the essential topics that are most useful in real-world projects. With every chapter, you will learn a new topic and be able to readily implement your build files. Style and approach This step-by-step guide focuses on being productive with every chapter. When required, topics are explained in-depth to give you a good foundation of the Gradle fundamentals. The book covers most aspects of builds required for conventional JVM-based projects, and when necessary, points you towards the right resources.