Skip to main content
All products
GitHub Actions

This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-07-06. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Building and testing Java with Gradle

In this article

You can create a continuous integration (CI) workflow in GitHub Actions to build and test your Java project with Gradle.

Note: GitHub-hosted runners are not currently supported on GitHub Enterprise Server. You can see more information about planned future support on the GitHub public roadmap.

Introduction

This guide shows you how to create a workflow that performs continuous integration (CI) for your Java project using the Gradle build system. The workflow you create will allow you to see when commits to a pull request cause build or test failures against your default branch; this approach can help ensure that your code is always healthy. You can extend your CI workflow to cache files and upload artifacts from a workflow run.

GitHub-hosted runners have a tools cache with pre-installed software, which includes Java Development Kits (JDKs) and Gradle. For a list of software and the pre-installed versions for JDK and Gradle, see "About GitHub-hosted runners".

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with YAML and the syntax for GitHub Actions. For more information, see:

We recommend that you have a basic understanding of Java and the Gradle framework. For more information, see Getting Started in the Gradle documentation.

Using self-hosted runners on GitHub Enterprise Server

When using setup actions (such as actions/setup-LANGUAGE) on GitHub Enterprise Server with self-hosted runners, you might need to set up the tools cache on runners that do not have internet access. For more information, see "Setting up the tool cache on self-hosted runners without internet access."

Using the Gradle starter workflow

GitHub provides a Gradle starter workflow that will work for most Gradle-based Java projects. For more information, see the Gradle starter workflow.

To get started quickly, you can choose the preconfigured Gradle starter workflow when you create a new workflow. For more information, see the "Quickstart for GitHub Actions."

You can also add this workflow manually by creating a new file in the .github/workflows directory of your repository.

YAML
# This workflow uses actions that are not certified by GitHub.
# They are provided by a third-party and are governed by
# separate terms of service, privacy policy, and support
# documentation.

# GitHub recommends pinning actions to a commit SHA.
# To get a newer version, you will need to update the SHA.
# You can also reference a tag or branch, but the action may change without warning.

name: Java CI

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Set up JDK 17
        uses: actions/setup-java@v3
        with:
          java-version: '17'
          distribution: 'temurin'
      - name: Validate Gradle wrapper
        uses: gradle/wrapper-validation-action@ccb4328a959376b642e027874838f60f8e596de3
      - name: Build with Gradle
        uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@749f47bda3e44aa060e82d7b3ef7e40d953bd629
        with:
          arguments: build

This workflow performs the following steps:

  1. The checkout step downloads a copy of your repository on the runner.
  2. The setup-java step configures the Eclipse Temurin (Java) 17 JDK by Eclipse Adoptium.
  3. The "Validate Gradle wrapper" step validates the checksums of Gradle Wrapper JAR files present in the source tree.
  4. The "Build with Gradle" step does a build using the gradle/gradle-build-action action provided by the Gradle organization on GitHub. The action takes care of invoking Gradle, collecting results, and caching state between jobs. For more information see gradle/gradle-build-action.

The default starter workflows are excellent starting points when creating your build and test workflow, and you can customize the starter workflow to suit your project’s needs.

Running on a different operating system

The starter workflow configures jobs to run on Linux, using the GitHub-hosted ubuntu-latest runners. You can change the runs-on key to run your jobs on a different operating system. For example, you can use the GitHub-hosted Windows runners.

runs-on: windows-latest

Or, you can run on the GitHub-hosted macOS runners.

runs-on: macos-latest

You can also run jobs in Docker containers, or you can provide a self-hosted runner that runs on your own infrastructure. For more information, see "Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions."

Specifying the JVM version and architecture

The starter workflow sets up the PATH to contain OpenJDK 8 for the x64 platform. If you want to use a different version of Java, or target a different architecture (x64 or x86), you can use the setup-java action to choose a different Java runtime environment.

For example, to use version 11 of the JDK provided by Adoptium for the x64 platform, you can use the setup-java action and configure the java-version, distribution and architecture parameters to '11', 'adopt' and x64.

YAML
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v3
  - name: Set up JDK 11 for x64
    uses: actions/setup-java@v3
    with:
      java-version: '11'
      distribution: 'adopt'
      architecture: x64

For more information, see the setup-java action.

Building and testing your code

You can use the same commands that you use locally to build and test your code.

The starter workflow will run the build task by default. In the default Gradle configuration, this command will download dependencies, build classes, run tests, and package classes into their distributable format, for example, a JAR file.

If you use different commands to build your project, or you want to use a different task, you can specify those. For example, you may want to run the package task that's configured in your ci.gradle file.

YAML
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v3
  - uses: actions/setup-java@v3
    with:
      java-version: '17'
      distribution: 'temurin'
  - name: Validate Gradle wrapper
    uses: gradle/wrapper-validation-action@ccb4328a959376b642e027874838f60f8e596de3
  - name: Run the Gradle package task
    uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@749f47bda3e44aa060e82d7b3ef7e40d953bd629
    with:
      arguments: -b ci.gradle package

Caching dependencies

Your build dependencies can be cached to speed up your workflow runs. After a successful run, the gradle/gradle-build-action caches important parts of the Gradle user home directory. In future jobs, the cache will be restored so that build scripts won't need to be recompiled and dependencies won't need to be downloaded from remote package repositories.

Caching is enabled by default when using the gradle/gradle-build-action action. For more information, see gradle/gradle-build-action.

Packaging workflow data as artifacts

After your build has succeeded and your tests have passed, you may want to upload the resulting Java packages as a build artifact. This will store the built packages as part of the workflow run, and allow you to download them. Artifacts can help you test and debug pull requests in your local environment before they're merged. For more information, see "Storing workflow data as artifacts."

Gradle will usually create output files like JARs, EARs, or WARs in the build/libs directory. You can upload the contents of that directory using the upload-artifact action.

YAML
steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v3
  - uses: actions/setup-java@v3
    with:
      java-version: '17'
      distribution: 'temurin'
  - name: Validate Gradle wrapper
    uses: gradle/wrapper-validation-action@ccb4328a959376b642e027874838f60f8e596de3
  - name: Build with Gradle
    uses: gradle/gradle-build-action@749f47bda3e44aa060e82d7b3ef7e40d953bd629
    with:
      arguments: build
  - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
    with:
      name: Package
      path: build/libs