Writing a build script

In the first chapter we have already written our first build script. Let's create a similar build script with a simple task. Gradle will look for a file with the name build.gradle, in the current directory. The file build.gradle contains the tasks that make up our project. In this example, we define a simple task that prints out a simple message to the console:

project.description = 'Simple project'

task simple << {
    println 'Running simple task for project ' + project.description
}

If we run the build we see the following output in the console:

$ gradle simple
:simple
Running simple task for project Simple project

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 2.08 secs

A couple of interesting things happen with this small build script. Gradle reads the script file and creates a Project object. The build script configures the Project object, and finally the set of tasks to be executed is determined and executed.

So, it is important to note that Gradle creates a Project object...