Default Gradle tasks

We created our simple build script with one task. We can ask Gradle to show us the available tasks for our project. Gradle has several built-in tasks we can execute. We type gradle -q tasks to see the tasks for our project:

hello-world $gradle -q tasks

-----------------------------------------------------
All tasks runnable from root project
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Help tasks
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dependencies - Displays the dependencies of root project 'hello-world'.
help - Displays a help message
projects - Displays the sub-projects of root project 'hello-world'.
properties - Displays the properties of root project 'hello-world'.
tasks - Displays the tasks runnable from root project 'hello-world' (some of the displayed tasks may belong to subprojects).

Other tasks
-----------
helloWorld

To see all tasks and more detail, run with --all.

Here, we see our task helloWorld in the Other tasks section. The Gradle built-in tasks are displayed in the Help tasks section. For example, to see some general help information, we execute the help task:

hello-world $ gradle -q help

Welcome to Gradle 1.1.

To run a build, run gradle <task> ...

To see a list of available tasks, run gradle tasks

To see a list of command-line options, run gradle --help

The properties task is very useful to see the properties available to our project. We haven't defined any property ourselves in the build script, but Gradle provides a lot of built-in properties. The following output shows some of the properties:

hello-world $ gradle -q properties

-----------------------------------------------------
Root project
-----------------------------------------------------

additionalProperties: {}
allprojects: [root project 'hello-world']
ant: org.gradle.api.internal.project.DefaultAntBuilder@6af37a62
antBuilderFactory: org.gradle.api.internal.project.DefaultAntBuilderFactory@16e7eec9
artifacts: org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.dsl.DefaultArtifactHandler@54edd9de
asDynamicObject: org.gradle.api.internal.DynamicObjectHelper@4b7aa961
buildDir: /Users/mrhaki/Projects/gradle-book/samples/chapter1/hello-world/build
buildDirName: build
buildFile: /Users/mrhaki/Projects/gradle-book/samples/chapter1/hello-world/build.gradle
...

The dependencies task will show dependencies (if any) for our project. Our first project doesn't have any dependencies when we run the task, as the output shows:

hello-world $ gradle -q dependencies

-----------------------------------------------------
Root project
-----------------------------------------------------

No configurations

The projects task will display sub-projects (if any) for a root project. Our project doesn't have any sub-projects. So when we run the task projects, the output shows us that our project has no sub-projects.

hello-world $ gradle -q projects

-----------------------------------------------------
Root project
-----------------------------------------------------

Root project 'hello-world'
No sub-projects

To see a list of the tasks of a project, run gradle <project-path>:tasks
For example, try running gradle :tasks