Chapter 2. Building Java Projects

In the previous chapter, we saw a very basic build script, which just printed the customary Hello World on the console. Now that we are comfortable with the Gradle command line interface, it's a perfect time for us to jump-start our journey with a simple Java project.

In this chapter, we will see how to build and test simple Java projects with Gradle, how external dependencies are added to the classpath, and how building distributable binaries work.

We will try to keep the Java code as minimal as possible so that we can focus more on the build of the project. Along the way, we will learn some best practices that a Gradle-based project should follow. It's okay if we are not able to comprehend all the build script syntax in this chapter because we are going to see that in detail in Chapter 4, Demystifying Build Scripts.