Any recent book publication for learning gradle?

Help/Discuss
1

most of the books out there are ~5 year old with no later revisions…
can anyone reccomend a book that is still valid and relatively recent for learning gradle from scratch?
thanks!

2

I don’t have a book to recommend, but the user manual has an into section under Authoring Gradle Builds > Learning the Basics.

There are also some free training courses that you can attend. Specifically, the Introduction to Gradle Build Tool course might be of interest to you.

3

Also, Jendrik Johannes has a good series of videos on YouTube. He has a few other playlists as well.

4

thanks @Chris_Dore
would you say some books, or specifically gradle in action (i kinda like the in action series) are still a good read?

5

The problem is, that Gradle is still developing in a pretty high pace.
GiA was written 2014.
Many many things changed since then and things that were good practice back then are now bad practice or even not possible anymore.
So while it might help to give a basic understanding, many of the concrete examples and recommendations are most probably outdated and might more confuse than help.
Same with blog posts or SO answers that reached a certain age, you always have to consider them with a very critical eye.

2 Likes
6

At the current date of 2024, for Gradle fundamental itself, Jendrik Johannes’s video is awesome but may not be “from scratch”, I would suggest taking a look at the new Docs which have some improvement on concept and samples compared to previous ones.

If it is combined with the Android environment, I open-sourced a notebook recently called ‘Kotlin-oriented Gradle Essentials’ KOGE . It’s a concise self-study handbook for Gradle, listing out a dozen confusing points for newcomers, points out the learning sequence, and links to appropriate reference materials - from questions, source code, and samples already available on the Internet.

8

I’d recommend “Gradle for Android” by Kevin Pelgrims. While it’s focused on Android development, it covers Gradle in a clear and practical way, and most of the concepts still apply across projects. Another solid choice is “Gradle in Action” by Benjamin Muschko, which is still very relevant, even though it’s a few years old. For super recent info, though, I’d suggest checking the Gradle official docs— they keep things updated and you can always find the latest practices there.