Setting Up Gradle

Generally, everything necessary to compile a Sponge plugin using Gradle can be done by simply adding the SpongeAPI dependency to your project:

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
    maven {
        name = 'sponge'
        url = 'http://repo.spongepowered.org/maven'
    }
}

dependencies {
    compile 'org.spongepowered:spongeapi:5.0.0'
}

However, for further Gradle integration with Plugin Metadata, we’re providing an additional Gradle plugin (called SpongeGradle) for Sponge plugins to use which allows you to minimize the necessary configuration for setting up a plugin project using Gradle.

Using SpongeGradle

Note

We recommend using the latest Gradle version together with SpongeGradle. The Gradle plugin may not work properly with very old Gradle versions.

Using SpongeGradle is very simple and allows you to minimize the necessary Gradle configuration for setting up a Sponge plugin on Gradle. Additionally, it provides integration for Plugin Metadata, such as automatically contributing the group, project name, version and description defined in your build script to the built plugin, so you only need to update your plugin version in one file.

Below is a simple template that should be usable for most plugins. Make sure to replace the group with the group ID you have chosen before.

plugins {
    id 'org.spongepowered.plugin' version '0.6'
}

group = 'com.example' // TODO
version = '1.0-SNAPSHOT'
description = 'An example plugin'

dependencies {
    compile 'org.spongepowered:spongeapi:5.0.0'
}

These few lines handle most settings you would normally do manually:

• Basic Gradle Java setup
• Set your project to compile with Java 8
• Add Sponge’s Maven repository (and Maven Central)
• Set up a plugin with the project name in lower case as plugin ID
• Automatically includes the project name, description and version in Plugin Metadata.

Manually setting the plugin ID

By default, the Gradle plugin will configure your plugin ID with project name (in lowercase) you have configured. If you want to use a custom plugin ID and still use the Plugin Metadata integration you can change it manually:

sponge {
    plugin {
        id = 'mypluginid'
    }
}

Overriding defaults

By default the Gradle plugin will contribute the plugin name, plugin version and description automatically to Plugin Metadata with defaults defined in the project properties. It is also possible to override these if you want to specify them manually:

sponge {
    plugin {
        meta {
            name = 'My Plugin'
            version = '1.0.0'
            description = 'This is a plugin'
        }
    }
}

You can also remove a default value entirely:

sponge {
    plugin {
        meta {
            description = null
        }
    }
}