Gradle Installation

Readme.md

Getting started with Gradle on the command-line is easy!

Install Gradle

Download Gradle (see specific links below) and then extract the Gradle distribution to a folder, which we will call GRADLE_HOME. Add GRADLE_HOME/bin to your PATH environment variable.

For Android Studio

Download Gradle 1.8 from the Gradle web site. At the moment, Android Studio v0.3.0 requires 1.8 now.

For Command Line with Eclipse

Download Gradle 1.6 from the Gradle web site. At the moment, only Gradle 1.6 works correctly with Eclipse. Using Gradle 1.7+ will fail with a cryptic error.

Define Environment Variables

Define the ANDROID_HOME environment variable which points to your Android SDK.

// Unix
export ANDROID_HOME=~/android-sdks

// Windows
set ANDROID_HOME=C:\android-sdks

Afterwards, you have to configure the GRADLE_HOME environment variable on your path:

export GRADLE_HOME=/your_gradle_directory
export PATH=$PATH:$GRADLE_HOME/bin

Install API 17 and Build Tools

In order for Gradle to work, ensure you have the API 17 SDK installed including the latest Android SDK Platform-tools and Android SDK Build-tools. Check this in the Android SDK Manager from within Eclipse.

Testing Gradle

Finally, you can check your working installation by running:

gradle -v

Gradle Project Setup

To use Gradle in your Android application, you have to create a build.gradle file:

buildscript {
  repositories {
    mavenCentral()
  }

  dependencies {
    classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:0.4'
  }
}

apply plugin: 'android'

android {
  compileSdkVersion 17
  buildToolsVersion '17'

  sourceSets {
    main {
      manifest.srcFile 'AndroidManifest.xml'
      java.srcDirs = ['src']
      resources.srcDirs = ['src']
      renderscript.srcDirs = ['src']
      res.srcDirs = ['res']
      assets.srcDirs = ['assets']
    }

    instrumentTest.setRoot('tests')
    instrumentTest {
      java.srcDirs = ['tests/src']
      res.srcDirs = ['tests/res']
      assets.srcDirs = ['tests/assets']
      resources.srcDirs = ['tests/src']
    }
  }

  dependencies {
    compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: '*.jar')
  }
}

Note that with Gradle 1.6 as downloaded above, the SDK version must be specified as 17. Changing to 18 at this time may break the Gradle build.

Using Gradle

The following commands can be used now. To do a full build:

gradle build

If a build occurs and you see the output:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 5.738 secs

Then Gradle is successfully setup for your project. If you get an error, try googling the error. Usually the issue is that you need to install the build tools or make sure to use Gradle 1.6.

Resources

Check out the following links for more details:

• Building with Gradle
• Gradle User Guide