Chapter 11. The Build Environment

Gradle provides several options that make it easy to configure the Java process that will be used to execute your build. While it's possible to configure these in your local environment via GRADLE_OPTS or JAVA_OPTS, certain settings like JVM memory settings, Java home, daemon on/off can be more useful if they can be versioned with the project in your VCS so that the entire team can work with a consistent environment. Setting up a consistent environment for your build is as simple as placing these settings into a gradle.properties file. The configuration is applied in following order (if an option is configured in multiple locations the last one wins):

The following properties can be used to configure the Gradle build environment:

Gradle offers a variety of ways to add properties to your build. With the -D command line option you can pass a system property to the JVM which runs Gradle. The -D option of the gradle command has the same effect as the -D option of the java command.

You can also add properties to your project objects using properties files. You can place a gradle.properties file in the Gradle user home directory (defined by the “GRADLE_USER_HOME” environment variable, which if not set defaults to USER_HOME/.gradle) or in your project directory. For multi-project builds you can place gradle.properties files in any subproject directory. The properties set in a gradle.properties file can be accessed via the project object. The properties file in the user's home directory has precedence over property files in the project directories.

You can also add properties directly to your project object via the -P command line option.

Gradle can also set project properties when it sees specially-named system properties or environment variables. This feature is very useful when you don't have admin rights to a continuous integration server and you need to set property values that should not be easily visible, typically for security reasons. In that situation, you can't use the -P option, and you can't change the system-level configuration files. The correct strategy is to change the configuration of your continuous integration build job, adding an environment variable setting that matches an expected pattern. This won't be visible to normal users on the system. ^[4]

If the environment variable name looks like ORG_GRADLE_PROJECT_prop=somevalue, then Gradle will set a prop property on your project object, with the value of somevalue. Gradle also supports this for system properties, but with a different naming pattern, which looks like org.gradle.project.prop.

You can also set system properties in the gradle.properties file. If a property name in such a file has the prefix “systemProp.”, like “systemProp.propName”, then the property and its value will be set as a system property, without the prefix. In a multi project build, “systemProp.” properties set in any project except the root will be ignored. That is, only the root project's gradle.properties file will be checked for properties that begin with the “systemProp.” prefix.

gradlePropertiesProp=gradlePropertiesValue
sysProp=shouldBeOverWrittenBySysProp
envProjectProp=shouldBeOverWrittenByEnvProp
systemProp.system=systemValue

task printProps << {
    println commandLineProjectProp
    println gradlePropertiesProp
    println systemProjectProp
    println envProjectProp
    println System.properties['system']
}

> gradle -q -PcommandLineProjectProp=commandLineProjectPropValue -Dorg.gradle.project.systemProjectProp=systemPropertyValue printProps
commandLineProjectPropValue
gradlePropertiesValue
systemPropertyValue
envPropertyValue
systemValue

Configuring an HTTP proxy (for downloading dependencies, for example) is done via standard JVM system properties. These properties can be set directly in the build script; for example, setting the proxy host would be done with System.setProperty('http.proxyHost', 'www.somehost.org'). Alternatively, the properties can be specified in a gradle.properties file, either in the build's root directory or in the Gradle home directory.

systemProp.http.proxyHost=www.somehost.org
systemProp.http.proxyPort=8080
systemProp.http.proxyUser=userid
systemProp.http.proxyPassword=password
systemProp.http.nonProxyHosts=*.nonproxyrepos.com|localhost

There are separate settings for HTTPS.

systemProp.https.proxyHost=www.somehost.org
systemProp.https.proxyPort=8080
systemProp.https.proxyUser=userid
systemProp.https.proxyPassword=password
systemProp.https.nonProxyHosts=*.nonproxyrepos.com|localhost

We could not find a good overview for all possible proxy settings. One place to look are the constants in a file from the Ant project. Here's a link to the Subversion view. The other is a Networking Properties page from the JDK docs. If anyone knows of a better overview, please let us know via the mailing list.