How do I define a compile-time *only* classpath in Gradle?

Question

Can someone please give me a simple build.gradle example of how I can specify compile-time-only classes that are not included in the runtime deployment (war).

Gradle seems to have gotten this the wrong way around since 'runtime' inherits from 'compile'. I can't imagine a situation where I would want classes at runtime that I wouldn't want at compile time. However, there are many circumstances where I need classes to generate code at compile time that I do not wish to deploy at runtime!

I've ploughed through the bloated gradle documentation but cannot find any clear instructions or examples. I suspect this might be achieved by defining a 'configuration' and setting it as the classpath of the CompileJava plugin - but the documentation falls short on explaining how to achieve this.

Answer 1

There has been a lot of discussion regarding this topic, mainly here, but not clear conclusion.

You are on the right track: currently the best solution is to declare your own provided configuration, that will included compile-only dependencies and add to to your compile classpath:

configurations{
  provided
}

dependencies{
  //Add libraries like lombok, findbugs etc
  provided '...'
}

//Include provided for compilation
sourceSets.main.compileClasspath += [configurations.provided]

// optional: if using 'idea' plugin
idea {
  module{
    scopes.PROVIDED.plus += [configurations.provided]
  }
}

// optional: if using 'eclipse' plugin
eclipse {
  classpath {
    plusConfigurations += [configurations.provided]
  }
}

Typically this works well.