February 2021

Welcome to the February 2021 Gradle Build Tool newsletter.

This issue covers the news for the community including the planned shutdown of JCenter and Bintray, the new and upcoming releases of Gradle Build Tool, and the introduction of the Gradle Fellowship program.

From the Community

Blog Posts

• Into the Sunset on May 1st: Bintray, JCenter, GoCenter, and ChartCenter - announces the plan by JFrog to shut down the popular JCenter repository and the Bintray service
• JFrog to Shut down JCenter and Bintray - discusses the above-mentioned sunset of JCenter and Bintray
• Publishing to Maven Central - describes how to publish libraries to Maven Central
• Gradle Goodness: Shared Configuration With Conventions Plugin - shows how to organize Gradle build logic with convention plugins
• Shadow Jobs: Test Pre-release Versions of The Tools You Rely Upon Through CI - demonstrates how to test new versions of build tools in order to catch regressions early
• A Crash Course in Classpaths: Build - explains how classpaths are set during build script compilation in Gradle
• Octopus Deploy Gradle Plugin - introduces a Gradle plugin for Octopus Deploy
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to Spring’s REST Galaxy - demonstrates how to build Spring Boot REST API with Gradle
• Top Android Tools Libraries in 2021 - recommends a number of Gradle plugins for Android development
• How to Run Standalone Kotlin with Gradle - demonstrates how to build a standalone Kotlin app with Gradle
• Upgrading a Gradle JavaFX Application - shares the experience of upgrading and running a JavaFX application with Gradle

White Papers

• 3 Ways to Mitigate Risk When Using Private Package Feeds - discusses risks and mitigations in software supply chains and recommends switching from Maven to Gradle for checksums and signature checks (by Microsoft)

Screencasts

• Working with Gradle in IntelliJ IDEA (2021) - demonstrates how to work with Gradle in Intellij IDEA (by JetBrains)

Plugins

• Gradle Node Plugin 3.0 adds support for configuration caching and configuration avoidance and improves Kotlin DSL support

From the Gradle Team

Planned JCenter and Bintray Shutdown

The popular services in the JVM ecosystem, JCenter and Bintray are going away. This blog post explains the impact of this change on Gradle builds and what can users do about it.

Gradle Fellowship Program

We kicked off the Gradle Fellowship program that recognizes and connects Gradle experts who help the global Gradle community to be more productive.

Gradle Releases

Gradle 6.8.3

Gradle 6.8 had 3 patch releases so far that fix a number of issues including performance regressions. We recommend always using the latest patch release.

Upcoming Gradle Releases

Gradle 7.0

Gradle 7.0, the next major release, is around the corner. It will enable file system watching by default and promote many currently incubating features.

Other Releases

Kotlin 1.4.30

Kotlin 1.4.30 has been released. As of the new release, the Kotlin Gradle plugin is fully compatible with the configuration cache. See the blog post for details.

Careers

If you share our passion for developer productivity and tooling, consider joining our globally distributed team and check out our job openings at gradle.com/careers.

Upcoming Events

• Feb 25 11:00 am PT (1 hour): Live Webinar: Developer Productivity Engineering in a Microservices Environment at VMWare
• Mar 11 11:00 am PT (0.5 hour):DevProdEng Showdown: Android Developer Productivity Engineering at Scale
• Mar 18 10:00 am PT (1 hour):Live Webinar: Dev Cloud Acceleration at Elastic with Gradle Enterprise and Google Cloud Platform
• Mar 23-24 8:30 am PT (4 hours each day): Training: Introduction to Gradle
• Mar 30 9:00 am PT (2.5 hours): Hands-On Workshop: Introduction to Developer Productivity Engineering
• Apr 28 9:00 am PT (3.5 hours): Training: Gradle Build Cache Deep Dive

See the Gradle Training webpage for an up-to-date list of all upcoming educational and training events.

---

If you have some news you’d like us to share in the next issue, use #gradle on Twitter or send us an email with the details to newsletter@gradle.com.

Until next time!

—The Gradle Team