The Liberty Gradle plugin supports install and operational control of Liberty runtime and servers. Use it to manage your application on Liberty for integration test and to create Liberty server packages.

• Build
• Usage
• Plugin Configuration
• Tasks
• Extensions

Clone this repository and then, with a JRE on the path, execute the following command in the root directory.

$ ./gradlew build

This will download Gradle, build the plugin, and install it in to the build\libs directory. It is also possible to install the plugin in to your local Maven repository using ./gradlew install.

To build the plugin and run the integration tests execute the following commands in the root directory. The runtime and runtimeVersion parameters are used to select the Liberty runtime that will be used to run the tests. The wlpLicense parameter is only needed for Liberty packaged as a JAR file.

$ ./gradlew install check -Druntime=<wlp|ol> -DruntimeVersion=<runtime_version> -DwlpLicense=<liberty_license_code>

The Liberty Gradle Plugin supports running with Gradle 7.6+ and Gradle 8.x as of release 3.7. When using a Gradle wrapper, ensure the wrapper version matches the version of Gradle being used.

The Liberty Gradle Plugin is tested with Long-Term-Support (LTS) releases of Java. The plugin, as of release 3.8, supports Java 8, 11, 17 and 21. Versions 3.5 to 3.7.x support Java 8, 11 and 17. Prior to version 3.5, the plugin is supported on Java 8 and 11.

Note: To use the Liberty Gradle Plugin with Java 21, a minimum of Gradle 8.4 is required. Since Gradle does not officially support Java 21 yet, there may be unknown issues. All of our automated tests are passing with Gradle 8.4 though.

Within your Gradle build script, you need to set up the classpath to include the Liberty Gradle plugin. You also need to define the Maven Central repository to find the plugin and its dependencies.

If you are using a snapshot version of the plugin make sure to define the Sonatype Nexus Snapshots repository in addition to the Maven Central repository.

Your build script should look like this:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
        maven {
            name = 'Sonatype Nexus Snapshots'
            url = 'https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/'
        }
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'io.openliberty.tools:liberty-gradle-plugin:3.7'
    }
}

To use the Liberty Gradle Plugin, include the following code in your build script:

apply plugin: 'liberty'

Alternatively, you can apply the plugin through the plugins block. You'll need to add the plugin's runtime dependencies to the buildscript classpath when using this method.

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
        mavenLocal()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath ('io.openliberty.tools:liberty-ant-tasks:1.9.13')
        classpath ('io.openliberty.tools:ci.common:1.8.28')
    }
}

plugins {
    id "io.openliberty.tools.gradle.Liberty" version "3.7"
}

The Liberty Gradle Plugin must first be configured with the Liberty server installation information. The installation information can be specified as:

• A Maven artifact
• An existing installation directory - reference the installDir property
• A Liberty server from a Liberty repository or other location

Installing from a Maven artifact is the default installation method. The default runtime artifact is the latest version of io.openliberty:openliberty-kernel.

Example using libertyRuntime property to install an Open Liberty beta runtime:

dependencies {
    libertyRuntime group: 'io.openliberty.beta', name: 'openliberty-runtime', version: '23.0.0.2-beta'
}

Example using libertyRuntime property to install a specific Open Liberty runtime version:

dependencies {
    libertyRuntime group: 'io.openliberty', name: 'openliberty-kernel', version: '23.0.0.3'
}

In order to configure WebSphere Liberty for installation, specify the libertyRuntime with the com.ibm.websphere.appserver.runtime group and the specific name and version that is needed. For a full list of artifacts available, see the installLiberty task documentation.

Example using the libertyRuntime property to install a WebSphere Liberty runtime from a Maven artifact:

dependencies {
    libertyRuntime group: 'com.ibm.websphere.appserver.runtime', name: 'wlp-webProfile8', version: '22.0.0.12'
}

See the Liberty extension properties reference for the properties used to configure the Liberty plugin. See each task for additional configuration and examples.

The Liberty plugin provides the following tasks for your project:

*The libertyDev, libertyDevc, and generateFeatures tasks have a runtime dependency on IBM WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit for Application Binaries, which is separately licensed under IBM License Agreement for Non-Warranted Programs. For more information, see the license. Note: The libertyDev and libertyDevc tasks have this dependency only when auto-generation of features is turned on. By default, auto-generation of features is turned off.

The Liberty Gradle plugin defines a built-in task order to allow a user to call an end task without worrying about calling the necessary tasks in between. By having the plugin manage tasks and their order of execution we can easily avoid some simple human errors. For example, in order to have a majority of the tasks function, the principal task installLiberty must be called, which our plugin would do for you.

The most appealing benefit from defining a task order is the ability to allow the user to call an end task directly. For example, if the user calls libertyStart out of the box, Gradle will recognize that it must call installLiberty -> libertyCreate -> installFeature -> deploy to get a server with features and apps properly running.

Click on a task to view what it depends on.

Extensions are tasks that improve the compatibility or user experience of third party libraries used with Liberty. The liberty-gradle-plugin provides the following extensions: