fatJar option for building jar-with-dependencies

Hi Szczepan,

Thomas Kinnen was kind to provide a solution for fat-jar creation - see http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GRADLE/Cookbook#Cookbook-Creatingafatjar

It is not a fully-fledged solution, but can be sufficient in some cases.

–
Tomek

We are kind of conservative to making our API bigger. We want to be really sure that its worth it. With the newest Gradle there is now a fantastic way to 'stage' potential API enhancement candidates. Any script can now be a plugin. Those scripts can live on your local machine or remotely.

I have added a fatjar plugin script. You can say now (with the latest Gradle):

apply url: 'http://github.com/hansd/huglins/raw/master/fatjar.gradle'

jar {
   merge configurations.runtime
}

task otherJar {
   merge files(fileTree('lib').matching { include '**/.jar' })
}

I would very much like to see something along the lines of the Maven Assembly Plugin's jar-with-dependencies added.

Hans, I attempted to use the plugin you posted and recieved:
No such property: url for class: org.gradle.api.internal.plugins.DefaultObjectConfigurationAction

I tried the following and it seemed to load the script though it looks like there are problems with the script still:
apply from: 'https://github.com/hansd/huglins/raw/master/fatjar.gradle'

BTW, I've got a OneJar plugin: https://github.com/RobertFischer/gradle-plugins

Thanks, Robert. I'm anxious to try it out. I'm getting the error message below right now:
Cause: Could not find property 'com' on project

I have a multi-maven project. I've attached the build.gradle file from the parent project where I included the plugin in case you see anything obvious that I did wrong (which is likely since I'm still new to gradle :o)

Thanks,
Ben

I updated my build script, but still cannot get Robert's plugin to work. I didn't realize the first time around that buildscript was a reserved word in gradle. I'm still getting the same error:
Caused by: groovy.lang.MissingPropertyException: Could not find property 'com' on project

Finally got it figured out. I left "Plugin" off the plugin name. I filed a new bug (http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GRADLE-1352) asking for Gradle to give back a better error message in this situation. I'll try out the plugin now and let you know how it works. Thanks!

I'm sorry, I still can't figure this out. Robert, could you post an example of how to use the plugin? I have it installed now, but am not sure how to call it.

Have you tried gradle oneJar?

Yep, no luck.

$ gradle oneJar
:unpackOneJar SKIPPED
:typedefOneJar
:java/com/benmccann/test/db:compileJava UP-TO-DATE
:java/com/benmccann/test/db:processResources UP-TO-DATE
:java/com/benmccann/test/db:classes UP-TO-DATE
:java/com/benmccann/test/db:jar UP-TO-DATE
:java/com/benmccann/test/backend:compileJava UP-TO-DATE
:java/com/benmccann/test/backend:processResources UP-TO-DATE
:java/com/benmccann/test/backend:classes UP-TO-DATE
:java/com/benmccann/test/backend:jar UP-TO-DATE
:java/com/benmccann/test/backend:oneJar

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

• Where:
  Build file '/home/bmccann/workspace/test/java/com/benmccann/test/backend/build.gradle'

• What went wrong:
  Execution failed for task ':java/com/benmccann/test/backend:oneJar'.
  Cause: Problem: failed to create task or type one-jar
  Cause: The name is undefined.
  Action: Check the spelling.
  Action: Check that any custom tasks/types have been declared.
  Action: Check that any <presetdef>/<macrodef> declarations have taken place.

Please provide such information upfront rather than letting us guess what the problem might be.

I can confirm that the OneJar plugin doesn't work for multi-project builds, at least not with Gradle 0.9.2.

Thanks. I wasn't sure that "gradle oneJar" was the correct invocation since there were no docs. I filed a bug requesting that it be clarified: https://github.com/RobertFischer/gradle-plugins/issues/issue/3

I also filed a bug for the fact that it's broken on multi-project builds:
https://github.com/RobertFischer/gradle-plugins/issues/issue/4

I'm on it.

Awesome. Thanks so much for being super responsive and providing this plugin. I'll be really excited to use it.

It looks like the Gradle Cookbook also has a tip on how to do this, but it doesn't seem to work, so I filed a new bug for that:
http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GRADLE-1361

I created a similar sample project using uberjar example but anyway need this feature.

Code: https://github.com/bond-/gradle-groovy-jar-example/blob/master/build.gradle
Example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9749032/create-a-groovy-executable-jar-with-gradle

I think gradle should provide a standard plugin (or even in core) for this functionality. While there are many "quick" plugins, scripts, snippets and Cookbook recipes to build a fat jar out there, none of them work out of the box for me. Building a working fat jar requires numerous (potential) steps, including but not limited to:

• excluding 'META-INF/.RSA', 'META-INF/.DSA' etc. to avoid signing issues when building executable jars
• combining META-INF/services files to avoid failures when applications use the ServiceLoader framework (easy to hit when you build an app that supports multiple JDBC drivers, for instance)
• combining NOTICE files, LICENSE files and other useful transformations

Basically, a plugin that can match maven shade/assembly in features