The documentation for Gradle Tooling API explains how to run builds using an actual existing build.gradle file (or, rather, the project directory). Gradle also provides testfixtures package and a ProjectBuilder util class that can be used to create a ‘dummy instance’, as the docs put it, of Project that can be built in tests, and this doesn’t create any actual permanent build files.
What if I need to launch a Gradle plugin programmatically, from the code of another application (an IDE in this particular case)? Can this be done without creating a separate build.gradle file which applies my plugin? I’m led to believe ProjectBuilder should be used for Gradle plugin testing and not what I’m trying to do here. Can i construct a build without creating an actual file, even if that file is temporary?
And how do I get Gradle aware of my plugin? I tried to use ProjectBuilder.builder().build().pluginManager.apply() for a plugin published in the Gradle plugin repository, but I’m getting a org.gradle.api.plugins.UnknownPluginException: Plugin with id '...' not found.