Gradle Exec Utilities

A small set of methods to make it easy to execute other things from a gradle script without needing to create a dedicated tasks for each invocation.

API

com.jdbernard.gradle.ExecUtil exposes a set of static methods. The two primary methods are:

• void exec(String[] cmd, File workingDirectory, boolean checkExit)

  Execute the command specified by cmd (each argument as a separate string). The process' output and error streams are redirected to System.out and System.err. This call will block until the sub-process exits.

  workingDirectory defines the process' working directory. If null, the process inherits the current working directory.

  If checkExit is true, exec uses a Groovy assertion to check that the exit value of the executed process is zero (fails the assertion if it is not).

  Other flavors of this method:

  • void exec(List<String> cmd, File workingDir, boolean checkExit),
  • void exec(String... cmd) - sets workingDir to null and checkExit to true,
  • void exec_(List<String> cmd) - sets workingDir to null and checkExit to false,
  • void exec_(String... cmd) - sets workingDir to null and checkExit to false,
  • void execAll(List<List<String>> cmds, File workingDir, boolean checkExit) - convenience method to kick off multiple processes at once.

• void spawn(String[] cmd, File workingdir)

  Similar to exec, except the call returns immediately and does not wait for the sub-process to complete. Becuase of this it cannot check the sub-process exit value.

  Other flavors:

  • spawn(List<String> cmd, File workingDir)
  • spawn(String... cmd) - sets workingDir to null

Example Usage

import static com.jdbernard.gradle.ExecUtil.*

// Execute: 'ls -al', ignoring the exit value
exec_('ls', '-al')

// Execute 'scss --update src.scss:dest.css', checking that the return is 
exec('scss', '--update', 'src.scss:dest.css')