The repo contains a gradlew
(or gradlew.bat
on windows) script. This script will automatically
download the right version of Gradle for this project, scoped to this project. This means you never
need to have Gradle installed manually on your computer. It also means, as the project updates to
newer versions of Gradle, you will pick them up automatically. And, the version of Gradle is checked
in, meaning you will always have the right version for whatever commit you are building from.
The only requirement to run Gradle is having a recent JDK installed. In order to ensure reproducible
builds, this project is configured to check the JDK you are currently using and fail if it does not
correspond to the JDK you are currently using. If you get an error, please download the indicated
JDK and make sure the java
command on your PATH
is of that JDK or that your JAVA_HOME
is
pointing at that JDK.
This documents explains how to use Gradle directly from the command line via the ./gradlew <task>
command. All Gradle tasks can also be invoked from the Gradle view in
IntelliJ IDEA.
There are several Gradle tasks you can use. Most notably:
./gradlew assemble
compile all code and create all Jar files./gradlew qualityGate
in addition to the above, run all quality checks and auto-fix formatting where possible./gradlew :<module-name>:<test-type>
run all tests in one module of the given test type.
You may run ./gradlew
(without arguments) for a detailed overview
./gradlew :app:modrun
runs a services instance./gradlew :test-clients:runTestClient -PtestClient=com.hedera.services.bdd.suites.crypto.HelloWorldSpec
./gradlew :swirlds-platform-base-example:run
runs Platform-base Example App
All modules are listed in settings.gradle.kts using
include(":<module-name>", "<module-folder-path>")
. The module-folder-path
should be a folder in
a subdirectory like platform-sdk or hedera-node. In the folder,
the following files are expected:
build.gradle.kts
specifies to which group of modules the module belongs, e.g.id("com.hedera.gradle.services")
orid("com.hedera.gradle.platform")
and may contain dependency definitions for tests.src/main/java/module-info.java
is the Java Module specification that is also used to determine the dependencies of the module by Gradle. Note that the last segment of the module name defined in themodule-info.java
file needs to correspond to the name of the module defined in settings.gradle.kts.
This project use of the Java Module System (JPMS). With this, dependencies between modules are
defined in the src/main/java/module-info.java
files that each module contains. Other modules are
identified by their Module Name there. For example, a dependency to the swirlds-logging
module
is expressed by requires com.swirlds.logging
. A dependency to the 3rd party library
com.fasterxml.jackson.core
is expressed by requires com.fasterxml.jackson.core
. Note: This
project utilizes the
org.gradlex.java-module-dependencies
plugin to achieve this integration between Gradle and the Java Module System.
Each dependency definition contains a scope – e.g. requires
or requires transitive
. If you are
unsure about a scope, use requires
when adding a dependency. Then execute ./gradlew qualityGate
which runs a dependency scope check that analysis the code to determine which Java types are visible
(and should be visible) to which modules. If the check fails, it will advise you how to change the
scope.
If you use a 3rd party module lke com.fasterxml.jackson.core
, a version for that module needs to
be selected. For this, the
hedera-dependency-versions/build.gradle.kts
defines a so-called Gradle platform (also called BOM) that contains the versions of all 3rd party
modules used. If you want to upgrade the version of a module, do this here. Remember to run
./gradlew qualityGate
after the change. If you need to use a new 3rd party module in a
src/main/java/module-info.java
file, you need to add the version here. (If the new module is not
completely Java Module System compatible, you may also need to add
patching rules).
Some 3rd party libraries we use are not yet fully Java Module System compatible. And some modules pull in other dependencies that we can neglect. Situations like this are treated as wrong/incomplete metadata in our Gradle setup and the file com.hedera.gradle.jpms-modules.gradle.kts contains the rules to adjust or extend the metadata of 3rd party libraries to address such problems.
Note: This project utilizes the org.gradlex.extra-java-module-info and org.gradlex.jvm-dependency-conflict-resolution plugins to ease the definition of patching rules.
Our Gradle build has a single version number for all modules. It is defined in version.txt. Changing this version number will automatically apply to every module.
We have different types of tests, defined in different folders – so-called source sets – in each module.
- located in
src/main/test
of the corresponding module - run with
./gradlew :<module-name>:test
Unit tests will always be executed in PR builds and must pass before merging. The vast majority of our tests should be unit tests (measured in the 10's of thousands). These tests are never flaky and should avoid arbitrary waits and timeouts at all costs. The full body of unit tests should execute in roughly 5 minutes.
- located in
src/main/itest
of the corresponding module - run with
./gradlew :<module-name>:itest
We define integration tests as those that involve several components, but not an entire working instance. These use JUnit. Integration tests take longer to execute than unit tests. These should be the second most plentiful type of test. They are designed to ensure two or more components work together. We recommend using Testcontainers for databases, mirror nodes, explorers, or other components that live in different repos. These tests should be written carefully to avoid flakiness. If a test fails, it should always mean that there is a real problem. Per module or subproject, integration tests should take no more than 10 minutes to execute. Across the entire repo, there should be thousands of integration tests.
Integration tests must all pass before merging to main, so they must be fast and reliable.
- located in
src/main/hammer
of the corresponding module - run with
./gradlew :<module-name>:hammer
A hammer test is a unit test that "hammers" the code. A more common and less visceral name for this type of test is a "fuzzing" test. These usually take the form of pseudo-random tests that run for an extended period of time and attempt to use a component in as many ways as possible.
Hammer tests by their nature take longer to execute. These are run on a nightly basis. They have concrete pass/fail behavior. If any hammer test fails, this should mean there is definitely a bug that needs to be triaged.
- located in
src/main/jmh
of the corresponding module - run with
./gradlew :<module-name>:jmh
Micro-benchmarks are like the unit-tests of performance testing. They should be used liberally for establishing metric-driven decisions about different designs. The specific numbers produced by a microbenchmark are not themselves very useful because different hardware under different conditions can give different numbers. But they are useful when comparing A/B implementations on the same hardware. These tests also take a significant amount of time to execute, and are not very good at giving pass/fail criteria after execution.
Rather, micro-benchmarks exist to help developers verify the impact of their changes in a particular part of the system. Appropriate benchmarks should be run prior to creation of a PR. These are run nightly, and we record the results, so we can do trend analysis over time.
We use the Java Micro-benchmarking Harness, or JMH, for writing and executing our micro-benchmarks.
Gradle projects put all build artifacts into build
directories. To clean your workspace of all
these build artifacts, use ./gradlew clean
. Note: cleaning is not necessary to get correct built
results. You only need to do it if you want to free disc space.
Generally, Gradle is configured through so-called Gradle convention plugins. A convention plugin
is a plugin that applies a certain set of defaults to all builds that include that convention. We
define one such plugins in gradle/plugins/src/main/kotlin using
Gradle's Kotlin DSL notation. If you need to adjust something in the build itself, this is the
places where all configuration is located. For details, see comments in the existing convention
plugins (*.gradle.kts
files).