GradleWrapper

From APIDesign

For years I seem to have troubles adopting proper Gradle's way of life as my Gradle post reveals in deep details. There are various reasons and every detail then counts. One can get quite sensitive even when seeing the gradlew, gradlew.bat scripts and a JAR file called gradle-wrapper.jar in projects repositories.

However, in the context of APIDesign and particularly the PropertyFiles discussion, it is necessary to admit that using Gradle wrapper is a correct solution! The PropertyFiles essay concludes that When you design an API based on PropertyFiles, don't forget to include a version identifier in it. Only then your API becomes ready for evolution!

By specifying version of Gradle to use in each project in gradle-wrapper.properties one follows the best practice advocated by me. Given relatively frequent incompatibilities between various versions of Gradle the conclusion must be strong: If you want to be sure your Gradle projects builds in a year or two, then: Whenever you create a Gradle project - make sure it contains the wrapper and exactly specifies the Gradle version!