We discussed in first chapter that a build file consists of three phases: initialization, configuration, and execution, which are explained briefly as follows:
- Initialization creates the project object.
- The configuration phase configures the project object, creates DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) based on task dependencies. It also executes the project and the task configuration statements.
- The execution phase finally executes the actions mentioned in the task body.
The task API mainly defines two types of closures: doFirst(Closure closure) and doLast(Closure closure), which internally calls doFirst(Action action) and doLast(Action action). You can mention either one or both of them.
To verify the configuration phase of a task, you can execute the build script using the --dry-run or –m option. The --dry-run ( or –m) option only goes through the initialization and configuration phase, not the execution phase. Try to execute the preceding build file with the --dry-run option and you will find all the configuration statements printed on the console:
$ gradle --dry-run This is project configuration part, description is Sample Java Project This is sampleTask1 configuration statements, taskDetail is This is custom property of task1 This is sampleTask2 configuration statements :help SKIPPED BUILD SUCCESSFUL
In Gradle 2.4 version, there are some performance improvements implemented in the configuration phase. For more details, refer to the release note at https://docs.gradle.org/2.4/release-notes#significant-configuration-time-performance-improvements.