Creating a plugin in a standalone project

We have defined our plugin in the project source directory, but we cannot re-use it in another project. We will learn how we can distribute our plugin logic, using a standalone project. Also, we will see how we can use the plugin in other projects.

By placing the plugin code in the buildSrc directory, we have separated the definition of the plugin and the usage. The plugin still cannot be used by other projects. To make the plugin reusable, we create a standalone project and create an artifact with the plugin code and publish the artifact to a repository. Other projects can then get the plugin from the repository and use the build logic from the plugin in the project.

We already have the code for the plugin and the test code in the buildSrc directory (from the previous section). We can copy this code to a new directory with the project for the plugin. In this new directory, we must also create a build.gradle file. The implicit dependencies and plugin...