Question

It there any way to avoid duplication in configuration between two similar tasks of the same type?

For example, I’d like to create a debugSomething task, with the same configuration as runSomething below but with the addition of a remote debugger argument to the jvmArgs:

task runSomething(dependsOn: jar, type: JavaExec, group: "Run") {
    jvmArgs "-Xmx1024m", "-XX:MaxPermSize=128m"
    main = "com.some.Main"
    classpath = sourceSets.main.runtimeClasspath
}

Answer 1

I’ve found that using the Task.configure method is very helpful for centralizing logic like this.

I haven’t tested it, but in your case this might look like this:

def commonSomething = {
    main = "com.some.Main"
    classpath = sourceSets.main.runtimeClasspath
    jvmArgs "-Xmx1024m", "-XX:MaxPermSize=128m"
}

task runSomething(dependsOn: jar, type: JavaExec, group: "Run") {
    configure commonSomething
}

task debugSomething(dependsOn: jar, type: JavaExec, group: "Run") {
    configure commonSomething
    jvmArgs ...add debug arguments...
}