<chapter id='plugins' xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
    <title>Plugins</title>
    <para>Now we look at
        <emphasis>how</emphasis>
        Gradle provides build-by-convention and out of the box functionality. These features are decoupled from the core
        of Gradle, and are provided via plugins. Although the plugins are decoupled, we would like to point out that
        the Gradle core plugins are NEVER updated or changed for a
        particular Gradle distribution. If there is a bug in the compile functionality of Gradle, we will release a new
        version of Gradle. There is no change of behavior for the lifetime of a given distribution of Gradle.
    </para>
    <section id='sec:using_plugins'>
        <title>Declaring plugins</title>
        <para>If you want to use the plugin for building a Java project, simply type
        </para>
        <programlisting><![CDATA[
usePlugin('java')	
]]></programlisting>
        <para>at the beginning of your script. That's all. From a technological point of view plugins use just the same
            operations as you can use from your build scripts. That is they use the Project and Task API (see
            <xref linkend='project_and_task_api'/>). The Gradle plugins use this API for:
        </para>
        <itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
                <para>Adding tasks to your build (e.g. compile, test)
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>Creating dependencies between those tasks to let them execute in the appropriate order.
                </para>
            </listitem>
            <listitem>
                <para>Adding a so called
                    <emphasis>convention object</emphasis>
                    to your project configuration.
                </para>
            </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
        <para>Let's check this out:
        </para>
        <sample id="pluginIntro" dir="userguide/tutorial/pluginIntro" title="Using plugin">
            <sourcefile file="build.gradle"/>
            <output args="-q check"/>
        </sample>
        <para>The Java Plugin adds a <literal>compile</literal>
            task to the project object which can be accessed by a build script.
        </para>
        <para>The usePlugin method either takes a string or a class as an argument. You can write
            <footnote>
                <para>Thanks to Gradle's default imports (see <xref linkend='ide_support'/>) you can also write
                    <literal>usePlugin(JavaPlugin)</literal>
                    in this case.
                </para>
            </footnote>
        </para>
        <programlisting><![CDATA[
usePlugin(org.gradle.api.plugins.JavaPlugin)
]]></programlisting>
        <para>Any class, which implements the Plugin interface, can be used as a plugin. Just pass the class as an
            argument. You don't need to configure anything else for this. If you want to access a custom plugin via a
            string identifier, you must inform Gradle about the mapping. You can do this in the file
            <literal>plugin.properties</literal>
            in the top level directory of Gradle. It looks like this for the current release:
        </para>
        <figure>
            <title>plugin.properties</title>
            <programlisting><xi:include href='../../toplevel/plugin.properties' parse='text'/></programlisting>
        </figure>
        <para>If you want to use your own plugins, you must make sure that they are accessible via the build script
            classpath (see <xref linkend='organizing_build_logic'/> for more information). To learn more about how
            to write custom plugins, see <xref linkend='custom_plugins'/>.
        </para>
    </section>
    <section id='sub:more_about_convention_objects'>
        <title>Configuration</title>
        <para>If you use the <emphasis>Java Plugin</emphasis>
            for example, there are a compile and a processResources task for your production code (the same is true for your test
            code). The default location for the output of those tasks is the directory <literal>build/classes</literal>.
            What if you want to change this? Let's try:
        </para>
        <sample id="pluginConfig" dir="userguide/tutorial/pluginConfig" title="Configuring a plugin">
            <sourcefile file="build.gradle"/>
            <output args="-q check"/>
        </sample>
        <para>Setting the
            <literal>destinationDir</literal>
            of the processResources task had only an effect on the processResources task. Maybe this was what you wanted. But what if
            you want to change the output directory for all tasks? It would be unfortunate if you had to do this for
            each task separately.
        </para>
        <para>Gradles tasks are usually <emphasis>convention aware</emphasis>. A plugin can add a convention object to
            your build. It can also map certain values of this convention object to task properties.
        </para>
        <sample id="pluginConvention" dir="userguide/tutorial/pluginConvention" title="Plugin convention object">
            <sourcefile file="build.gradle"/>
            <output args="-q check"/>
        </sample>
        <para>The <emphasis>Java Plugin</emphasis> has added a convention object with a <literal>classesDirName</literal>
            property. The properties of a convention object can be accessed like project properties. As shown in the
            example, you can also access the convention object explicitly.
        </para>
        <para>By setting a task attribute explicitly (as we have done in the first example) you overwrite the convention
            value for this particular task.
        </para>
        <para>Not all of the tasks attributes are mapped to convention object values. It is the decision of the plugin
            to decide what are the shared properties and then bundle them in a convention object and map them to the
            tasks.
        </para>
        <section>
            <title>More about convention objects</title>
            <para>Every project object has a convention object which is a container for convention objects contributed
                by the plugins declared for your project. If you simply access or set a property or access a method in
                your build script, the project object first looks if this is a property of itself. If not, it delegates
                the request to its convention object. The convention object checks if any of the plugin convention
                objects can fulfill the request (first wins and the order is not defined). The plugin convention objects
                also introduce a namespace.
            </para>
            <programlisting><![CDATA[
usePlugin('java')
println classesDir
println convention.classesDir
println convention.plugins.java.classesDir
]]></programlisting>
            <para>All three statements print out the same property. The more specific statements are useful if there are
                ambiguities.
            </para>
        </section>
        <section id='sub:declaring_plugins_multiple_times'>
            <title>Declaring plugins multiple times</title>
            <para>A plugin is only called once for a given project, even if you have multiple
                <literal>usePlugin()</literal>
                statements. An additional call after the first call has no effect but doesn't hurt either. This can be
                important if you use plugins which extend other plugins. For example
                <literal>usePlugin('groovy')</literal>
                calls also the Java Plugin. We say the Groovy plugin extends the Java plugin. But you might as well
                write:
            </para>
            <programlisting><![CDATA[
usePlugin('java')
usePlugin('groovy')
]]></programlisting>
            <para>If you use cross-project configuration in multi-project builds this is a useful feature.
            </para>
        </section>
    </section>
    <section>
        <title>Summary</title>
        <para>Plugins provide tasks, which are glued together via dependsOn relations and a convention object.
        </para>
    </section>
</chapter>
