Plugins are the primary way of providing all the useful features in Gradle. They add various capabilities (such as task types to compile code) and conventions (such as creation of default tasks to build a project, depending on the project structure).

You can use a vast number of plugins from the Gradle community depending on the build needs such as:
  • The base plugin that provides some tasks and conventions that are common to most builds.
  • The maven publish plugin that provides the ability to publish build artifacts to an Apache Maven repository, and many more.

The OpenEdge DevOps Framework provides Gradle plugins for ABL projects. When creating Gradle plugins, you should separate the capabilities from convention because conventions can be opinionated (by having predefined tasks and defaults) and might expect a particular project structure (such as a Progress Developer Studio for OpenEdge project) whereas in real time scenario, projects might differ for some customers. Hence, the plugins provided by the OpenEdge DevOps Framework are designed to be flexible enough to cater to all the customer needs.

Currently, there are two ABL gradle plugins available:

ABL base plugin (progress.openedge.abl-base)

The ABL base plugin defines various capabilities, under task types and extensions. Task types define individual task capabilities like compile ABL code, run ABL unit tests, and other tasks. Extensions are global configurations available to all the task types.

The ABL base plugin is intended for users who have ABL source files that are not structured as Progress Developer Studio projects. Users can create and define their tasks for various steps required to build an ABL project by using the task types; for example, using ABLCompile task type to create a task for compiling ABL code. For more information, see ABL Base Plugin.

ABL plugin (progress.openedge.abl)

The ABL plugin depends on the Progress Developer Studio project structure and is recommended for the Progress Developer Studio users. This plugin, by default, provides various predefined tasks required to build an ABL project (such as task to compile ABL sources), based on the project’s propath and properties so that you can build your project with minimum effort and enforce best build practices.

These predefined tasks and the necessary parameters required for these tasks (for example, compiling ABL files) can be configured in the build.config file that is part of each Developer Studio project. This way you do not have to maintain separate configuration for development environments and build environments.

Users who do not have a Progress Developer Studio for OpenEdge project but still prefer using predefined tasks can use the ABL plugin, provided they add and configure the required build.config and .propath files for their source artifacts. For more information about how to use and configure this plugin, see ABL Plugin .