The recommended way to execute any Gradle build is with the Gradle Wrapper.

gradle basic 2

The Wrapper script invokes a declared version of Gradle, downloading it beforehand if necessary.

wrapper workflow

The Wrapper is available as a gradlew or gradlew.bat file.

The Wrapper provides the following benefits:

  • Standardizes a project on a given Gradle version.

  • Provisions the same Gradle version for different users.

  • Provisions the Gradle version for different execution environments (IDEs, CI servers…​).

Using the Gradle Wrapper

It is always recommended to execute a build with the Wrapper to ensure a reliable, controlled, and standardized execution of the build.

Depending on the operating system, you run gradlew or gradlew.bat instead of the gradle command.

Typical Gradle invocation:

$ gradle build

To run the Wrapper on a Linux or OSX machine:

$ ./gradlew build

To run the Wrapper on Windows PowerShell:

$ .\gradlew.bat build

The command is run in the same directory that the Wrapper is located in. If you want to run the command in a different directory, you must provide the relative path to the Wrapper:

$ ../gradlew build

The following console output demonstrates the use of the Wrapper on a Windows machine, in the command prompt (cmd), for a Java-based project:

$ gradlew.bat build

Downloading https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-5.0-all.zip
.....................................................................................
Unzipping C:\Documents and Settings\Claudia\.gradle\wrapper\dists\gradle-5.0-all\ac27o8rbd0ic8ih41or9l32mv\gradle-5.0-all.zip to C:\Documents and Settings\Claudia\.gradle\wrapper\dists\gradle-5.0-al\ac27o8rbd0ic8ih41or9l32mv
Set executable permissions for: C:\Documents and Settings\Claudia\.gradle\wrapper\dists\gradle-5.0-all\ac27o8rbd0ic8ih41or9l32mv\gradle-5.0\bin\gradle

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 12s
1 actionable task: 1 executed

Consult the Gradle Wrapper reference to learn more.