Application Project¶

An application project is runnable as a JAR and publishes TAR and ZIP artifacts that make running the application easier. The build.gradle.kts file is constructed as follows:

Plugins¶

At the very least, we need the following plugins:

the application plugin produces a runnable JAR;
the org.metaborg.convention.java plugin applies the Metaborg convention for Java projects;
the org.metaborg.convention.maven-publish plugin allows the project to be published in a Maven repository; and

build.gradle.kts

// Workaround for issue: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KTIJ-19369
@Suppress("DSL_SCOPE_VIOLATION")
plugins {
    application
    id("org.metaborg.convention.java")
    id("org.metaborg.convention.maven-publish")
}

The @Suppress("DSL_SCOPE_VIOLATION") suppresses an error in IntelliJ when using libs and Gradle 7. This is not necessary in Gradle 8 or newer.

Main Class¶

When running the JAR from the command line, by default the main class is executed. This is set using the application.mainClass property:

```kotlin title="build.gradle.kts application { mainClass.set("org.metaborg.myapp.Program") }

## Publications
To be able to publish the application using the `maven-publish` plugin, we need to configure the publications. For an application, these are the recommended publications:

```kotlin title="build.gradle.kts
publishing {
    publications {
        create<MavenPublication>("mavenApp") {
            from(components["java"])
            artifact(tasks.distZip)
            artifact(tasks.distTar)
        }
    }
}

The distZip and distTar tasks build a ZIP and TAR, respectively, that include not only the application JAR but also its runtime dependencies and special scripts for running the application from the command-line.

Maven Publish Convention¶

The org.metaborg.convention.maven-publish convention must also be configured. This is usually done in the root project.

Gitonium¶

The org.metaborg.gitonium plugin should be configured, also usually in the root project.