Using the Checkstyle plugin

If we are working on a Java project, and apply the Java plugin to our project, we get an empty task with the name check. This is a dependency task for the build task. This means that when we execute the build task, the check task is executed as well. We can write our own tasks to check something in our project and make it a dependency task for the check task. So if the check task is executed, our own task is executed as well. And not only the tasks we write ourselves, but the plugins also, can add new dependency tasks to the check task.

We will see in this chapter that most plugins will add one or more tasks as a dependency task to the check task. This means that we can apply a plugin to our project, and when we invoke the check or build task, the extra tasks of the plugin are executed automatically.

Also, the check task is dependent on the test task. Gradle will always make sure the test task is executed before the check task, so we know that all source files and...