Question

I’m trying to pass an argument from command line to a Java class. I followed this post: http://gradle.1045684.n5.nabble.com/Gradle-application-plugin-question-td5539555.html but the code does not work for me (perhaps it is not meant for JavaExec?). Here is what I tried:

task listTests(type:JavaExec){
    main = "util.TestGroupScanner"
    classpath = sourceSets.util.runtimeClasspath
    // this works...
    args 'demo'
    /*
    // this does not work!
    if (project.hasProperty("group")){
        args group
    }
    */
}

The output from the above hard coded args value is:

C:\ws\svn\sqe\sandbox\selenium2forbg\testgradle>g listTests
:compileUtilJava UP-TO-DATE
:processUtilResources UP-TO-DATE
:utilClasses UP-TO-DATE
:listTests
Received argument: demo

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 13.422 secs

However, once I change the code to use the hasProperty section and pass "demo" as an argument on the command line, I get a NullPointerException:

C:\ws\svn\sqe\sandbox\selenium2forbg\testgradle>g listTests -Pgroup=demo -s

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* Where:
Build file 'C:\ws\svn\sqe\sandbox\selenium2forbg\testgradle\build.gradle' line:25

* What went wrong:
A problem occurred evaluating root project 'testgradle'.
> java.lang.NullPointerException (no error message)

* Try:
Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.

* Exception is:
org.gradle.api.GradleScriptException: A problem occurred evaluating root project
 'testgradle'.
    at org.gradle.groovy.scripts.internal.DefaultScriptRunnerFactory$ScriptRunnerImpl.run(DefaultScriptRunnerFactory.java:54)
    at org.gradle.configuration.DefaultScriptPluginFactory$ScriptPluginImpl.apply(DefaultScriptPluginFactory.java:127)
    at org.gradle.configuration.BuildScriptProcessor.evaluate(BuildScriptProcessor.java:38) 

There is a simple test project available at http://gradle.1045684.n5.nabble.com/file/n5709919/testgradle.zip that illustrates the problem.

This is using Gradle 1.0-rc-3. The NullPointer is from this line of code:

  args group 

I added the following assignment before the task definition, but it didn’t change the outcome:

  group = hasProperty('group') ? group : 'nosuchgroup' 

Any pointers on how to pass command line arguments to Gradle appreciated.

Answer 1

project.group is a predefined property. With -P, you can only set project properties that are not predefined. Alternatively, you can set Java system properties (-D).