ci.gradle

The Liberty Gradle plugin supports install and operational control of Liberty runtime and servers. Use it to manage your application on Liberty for integration test and to create Liberty server packages.

• Build
• Usage
• Plugin Configuration
• Tasks
• Extensions

Build

Clone this repository and then, with a JRE on the path, execute the following command in the root directory.

$ ./gradlew build

This will download Gradle, build the plugin, and install it in to the build\libs directory. It is also possible to install the plugin in to your local Maven repository using ./gradlew install.

To build the plugin and run the integration tests execute the following commands in the root directory. The runtime and runtimeVersion parameters are used to select the Liberty runtime that will be used to run the tests. The wlpLicense parameter is only needed for Liberty packaged as a JAR file.

$ ./gradlew install check -Druntime=<wlp|ol> -DruntimeVersion=<runtime_version> -DwlpLicense=<liberty_license_code>

Usage

Java Support

The Liberty Gradle Plugin is tested with Long-Term-Support (LTS) releases of Java. The plugin, as of release 3.5, supports Java 8, 11 and 17. Prior to this version, the plugin is supported on Java 8 and 11.

Note: When running the Liberty Gradle Plugin with Java 17, the minimum supported version of Gradle is 7.3. That is when Gradle introduced full support for Java 17. Also, the Gradle wrapper should match the version of Gradle being used.

Adding the plugin to the build script

Within your Gradle build script, you need to set up the classpath to include the Liberty Gradle plugin. You also need to define the Maven Central repository to find the plugin and its dependencies.

If you are using a snapshot version of the plugin make sure to define the Sonatype Nexus Snapshots repository in addition to the Maven Central repository.

Your build script should look like this:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
        maven {
            name = 'Sonatype Nexus Snapshots'
            url = 'https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/'
        }
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'io.openliberty.tools:liberty-gradle-plugin:3.4.1'
    }
}

To use the Liberty Gradle Plugin, include the following code in your build script:

apply plugin: 'liberty'

Alternatively, you can apply the plugin through the plugins block. You'll need to add the plugin's runtime dependencies to the buildscript classpath when using this method.

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
        mavenLocal()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath ('io.openliberty.tools:liberty-ant-tasks:1.9.9')
        classpath ('io.openliberty.tools:ci.common:1.8.20')
    }
}

plugins {
    id "io.openliberty.tools.gradle.Liberty" version "3.4.1"
}

Plugin Configuration

See the Liberty extension properties reference for the properties used to configure the Liberty plugin. See each task for additional configuration and examples.

Tasks

The Liberty plugin provides the following tasks for your project:

Task	Description
cleanDirs	Cleans the Liberty server logs, workarea, and applications folders.
compileJsp	Compiles the JSP files from the src/main/webapp directory into the build/classes directory.
deploy	Deploys one or more applications to a Liberty server.
generateFeatures	Scan the class files of an application and create a Liberty configuration file in the source configuration directory containing the Liberty features the application requires.
installFeature	Installs an additional feature to the Liberty runtime.
installLiberty	Installs the Liberty runtime from a repository.
libertyCreate	Creates a Liberty server.
libertyDebug	Runs the Liberty server in the console foreground after a debugger connects to the debug port (default: 7777).
libertyDev	Start a Liberty server in dev mode.
libertyDevc	Start a Liberty server in dev mode in a container.
libertyDump	Dumps diagnostic information from the Liberty server into an archive.
libertyJavaDump	Dumps diagnostic information from the Liberty server JVM.
libertyPackage	Packages a Liberty server.
libertyRun	Runs a Liberty server in the Gradle foreground process.
libertyStart	Starts the Liberty server in a background process.
libertyStatus	Checks to see if the Liberty server is running.
libertyStop	Stops the Liberty server.
prepareFeature	Prepares a user feature for installation to the Liberty runtime.
undeploy	Removes applications from the Liberty server.
uninstallFeature	Remove a feature from the Liberty runtime.

Task ordering

The Liberty Gradle plugin defines a built-in task order to allow a user to call an end task without worrying about calling the necessary tasks in between. By having the plugin manage tasks and their order of execution we can easily avoid some simple human errors. For example, in order to have a majority of the tasks function, the principal task installLiberty must be called, which our plugin would do for you.

The most appealing benefit from defining a task order is the ability to allow the user to call an end task directly. For example, if the user calls libertyStart out of the box, Gradle will recognize that it must call installLiberty -> libertyCreate -> installFeature -> deploy to get a server with features and apps properly running.

Click on a task to view what it depends on.

Extensions

Extensions are tasks that improve the compatibility or user experience of third party libraries used with Liberty. The liberty-gradle-plugin provides the following extensions:

Extension	Description
configureArquillian	Integrates arquillian.xml configuration for the Liberty Managed and Remote Arquillian containers in the liberty-gradle-plugin. Automatically configures required arquillian.xml parameters for the Liberty Managed container.
Spring Boot Support	The Liberty Gradle Plugin supports thinning and installing Spring Boot applications onto the Liberty server.