Acknowledgments

When thinking about writing a book, you have no idea how much work it’s going to be. It’s safe to say that it literally controls your life for an extended period of time. After a while, the writing part becomes easier. The hard part is to start writing every day. This wouldn’t have been possible without the support, encouragement, and help of others.

In 2010, I started to evaluate Gradle for the first time as a replacement for a Maven project for a previous employer. I probably wouldn’t have done that without the spike initiated by Jonathan Bodner, a long-term acquaintance, whom I deeply admire for his technical insight. He started me on my way to getting excited about Gradle, becoming deeply involved with its community, and writing plugins of my own.

I’ve been a technical reviewer for books published by Manning for many years before writing my own. It started when I met Dan Allen, the author of Seam in Action (Manning, 2008), at one of the No Fluff Just Stuff conferences. After chatting with me for a while, he quickly got me excited about his endeavors and I offered to help him by reviewing his book. My engagement got me a first glimpse of what it means to write a book. I had always wanted to write a book, but never found the appropriate time or topic to jump on it. With Gradle, it just felt right. Thanks, Dan, for your enthusiasm that inspired me to carry on the torch and make it my own.

One of the first things you do before writing a book is put together the outline and table of contents. The first person I showed the draft to was David James, the organizer of the Washington DC–area Groovy user group. Thanks for your outside perspective on the organization of the book, your meticulous attention to detail, and your strong encouragement to make the book a reality.

No commercial book is published without many people in the background. This goes out to everyone involved in the process at Manning Publications. Michael Stephens, who I talked to first, bought into the idea of this book and ultimately trusted me to do a good job. My gratitude also goes to Cynthia Kane, who helped me to find my writing style. I’d also like to thank Jennifer Stout, my development editor, who always tried to get the best out of me, made me think about whole text passages in a different way, and tolerated my impatience. You’ve been a great help. Thanks also to the whole Manning production and marketing team for guidance along the way and for making the book what it is now. I know you did a tremendous amount of work.

I’d also like to thank the members of the Gradleware team, as well as the Gradle community, for creating Gradle and pushing the boundaries of build automation. Your continued effort and belief in a high-quality product improves the life of many disgruntled build masters around the globe. Special thanks go out to René Gröschke and Luke Daley for their technical insight and their review of the first third of the book. I am also grateful to Hans Dockter, the founder of Gradle, for contributing the foreword and endorsing this book in its early stages, and for the continued promotion through Gradleware.

Thanks to the following reviewers of the manuscript who provided invaluable feedback and gave me a different perspective on the content: Andy Keffalas, BJ Peter DeLaCruz, Chris Grijalva, Chris Nauroth, Dominik Helleberg, Eric Wendelin, Iain Starks, John Moses, Jon Bodner, Marcin Nowina-Krowicki, Mayur S. Patil, Mehrdad Karjoo, Mohd Suhaizal Md Kamari, Nacho Ormeño, Nick Watts, Pawel Dolega, Rob Bugh, Robin Percy, Samuel Brown, Scott Bennett-McLeish, Steve Dickson, Tarin Gamberini, Wellington R. Pinheiro, and Zekai Otles. Thanks also to Barry Kern for his careful technical proofread of the manuscript shortly before it went into production.

Special thanks to Spencer Allain, Jonathan Keam, and Robert Wenner for thoroughly reading every chapter of the book and providing me with line-by-line edits and comments at different stages of development; Michael McGarr and Samuel Brown for bouncing around ideas that involved content on continuous delivery and DevOps; and Baruch Sadogursky from JFrog for the technical review of chapter 14 and for promoting the book even before it was released. I also wish to thank the relentless Author Online forum participants for pushing the content to the next level.

Writing a book requires making sacrifices and puts tremendous strain on personal relationships. I would like to thank my family and friends for being supportive, encouraging, and understanding while I’ve worked toward completing this ambitious goal. And, yes, there will be time for hanging out without me thinking about the content of the current chapter.

I’m deeply grateful to my wife Sarah for her unending support and optimism. You pushed me to believe in myself, made me take breaks from writing, and tolerated me falling asleep before 9:00 p.m. most days. Without you, the writing process would have been far more grueling than it was.