Execute Gradle builds in GitHub Actions workflows

This GitHub Action can be used to execute a Gradle build on any platform supported by GitHub Actions.

Usage

The following workflow will run ./gradlew build using the wrapper from the repository on ubuntu, macos and windows. The only prerequisite is to have Java installed: you define the version of Java you need to run the build using the actions/setup-java action.

# .github/workflows/gradle-build-pr.yml
name: Run Gradle on PRs
on: pull_request
jobs:
  gradle:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        os: [ubuntu-latest, macos-latest, windows-latest]
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - uses: actions/setup-java@v1
      with:
        java-version: 11
    - uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@v1
      with:
        arguments: build

Gradle arguments

The arguments input can used to pass arbitrary arguments to the gradle command line.

Here are some valid examples:

arguments: build
arguments: check --scan
arguments: some arbitrary tasks
arguments: build -PgradleProperty=foo
arguments: build -DsystemProperty=bar
....

See gradle --help for more information.

If you need to pass environment variables, simply use the GitHub Actions workflow syntax:

- uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@v1
  env:
    CI: true

Run a build from a different directory

- uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@v1
  with:
    build-root-directory: some/subdirectory

Use a specific gradle executable

 - uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@v1
   with:
     gradle-executable: path/to/gradle

Use a Gradle wrapper from a different directory

 - uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@v1
   with:
     gradle-executable: path/to/gradlew

Setup and use a declared Gradle version

 - uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@v1
   with:
     gradle-version: 6.5

gradle-version can be set to any valid Gradle version.

Moreover, you can use the following aliases:

Alias	Selects
wrapper	The Gradle wrapper's version (default, useful for matrix builds)
current	The current stable release
release-candidate	The current release candidate if any, otherwise fallback to current
nightly	The latest nightly, fails if none.
release-nightly	The latest release nightly, fails if none.

This can be handy to, for example, automatically test your build with the next Gradle version once a release candidate is out:

# .github/workflows/test-gradle-rc.yml
name: Test latest Gradle RC
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: 0 0 * * * # daily
jobs:
  gradle-rc:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - uses: actions/setup-java@v1
      with:
        java-version: 11
    - uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@v1
      with:
        gradle-version: release-candidate
        arguments: build --dry-run # just test build configuration

Caching

This action provides 3 levels of caching to help speed up your GitHub Actions:

• distributions caches any distributions downloaded to satisfy a gradle-version parameter ;
• gradle-user-home caches downloaded dependencies, wrapper distributions, and other stuff from the Gradle User home directory ;
• project-dot-gradle caches stored configuration-cache state, saving time configuring the build.

Each of these are enabled by default. To save caching space, you can disable any of them as follows:

distributions-cache-enabled: true
gradle-user-home-cache-enabled: true
project-dot-gradle-cache-enabled: true

The distributions cache uses a cache key that is unique to the downloaded distribution. This will not change over time.

The gradle-user-home and project-dot-gradle caches compute a cache key based on the current commit and the Gradle invocation. As such, these are likely to change on each subsequent run of GitHub actions, allowing the most recent state to always be available in the GitHub actions cache.

By default, this action aims to cache any and all reusable state that may be speed up a subsequent build invocation.

At this time it is not possible to fine-tune this caching. If you have a legitimate use case for fine-grained caching or restricting which files are cached, please raise an issue.

Using the caches read-only

Cache storage space is limited for GitHub actions, and writing new cache entries can trigger the deletion of exising entries. In some circumstances, it makes sense for a Gradle invocation to read any existing cache entries but not to write changes back. For example, you may want to write cache entries for builds on your main branch, but not for any PR build invocations.

You can enable read-only caching for any of the caches asfollows:

distributions-cache-enabled: read-only
gradle-user-home-cache-enabled: read-only
project-dot-gradle-cache-enabled: read-only

Build scans

If your build publishes a build scan the gradle-build-action action will emit the link to the published build scan as an output named build-scan-url.

You can then use that link in subsequent actions of your workflow.

For example:

# .github/workflows/gradle-build-pr.yml
name: Run Gradle on PRs
on: pull_request
jobs:
  gradle:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        os: [ubuntu-latest, macos-latest, windows-latest]
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - uses: actions/setup-java@v1
      with:
        java-version: 11
    - uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@v1
      with:
        arguments: build
      id: gradle
    - name: "Comment build scan url"
      uses: actions/github-script@v3
      if: github.event_name == 'pull_request' && failure()
      with:
        github-token: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}
        script: |
          github.issues.createComment({
            issue_number: context.issue.number,
            owner: context.repo.owner,
            repo: context.repo.repo,
            body: '❌ ${{ github.workflow }} failed: ${{ steps.gradle.outputs.build-scan-url }}'
          })