Quick Links

Introduction

This is a companion document to the Template Developer’s Guide to help describe a template developer’s workflow when creating templates as there will be many iterations of changes and testing.

The main purpose is to keep these instructions out of the guide as they would be used multiple times throughout.

The examples will follow the projects used in the guide.

Basic Steps

  1. Install the template to the Skeletal template cache.

  2. Create a test project from the template.

  3. Review the project files.

  4. Run tests.

  5. Build a distribution.

  6. Run the application.

Installing a Template in Cache

When templates are first used from a repository they are copied to the Skeletal cache $HOME/./skeletal/templates but you can install them directly with the installTemplate<template name> task from my-lzb-templates

gradle installTemplate* task
./gradlew installTemplateSimpleJavaSpockGradle

Creating a Test Project

Use the installed simple-java-spock-gradle version 0.1.0 template to create a my-java-app project with group net.codebuilders, archiveId java-app, and version 1.0-SNAPSHOT. We used the script binding variable artifactId for the project name in lazybones.groovy and used that for the archive name and application command in the template. From a directory to create a test project in:

create command
skeletal create simple-java-spock-gradle 0.1.0 my-java-app -Pgroup=net.codebuilders -ParchiveId=java-app -Pversion=1.0-SNAPSHOT

Note that you have to specify the version of the template to install, otherwise Skeletal will look up the latest version online and either say the template doesn’t exist, or use whatever the latest version is (not your development version).

Running Tests

The Gradle check task is a lifecycle task used to compile and run your unit and integration tests as well as any code style, vulnerability scans and other validation tasks you might have. If you only have unit tests this is the same as running gradlew test

Change to application directory and run tests:

gradle check task
cd my-java-app/

./gradlew check

You can see the test report in app/build/reports/tests/test/index.html

Building and Running the Distribution

A distribution is your application and launch scripts packed in a zip or tar archive ready for distribution to users to unpack and use.

The installDist task will create an "installed" unpacked distribution within the build directory layout.

gradle installDist task
./gradlew installDist

Change directory into the distribution:

cd app/build/install/java-app

Run the application using the java-app script.

run application
bin/java-app
Hello World!

Cleaning Up

To prepare for more development and testing you can delete the test application and the template from the Skeletal cache.