For what it's worth, I have had (and still do) the exact same experience.
To me, the style guide is a bit similar to trying to learn a language by
learning premade sentences. There is too much emphasis on "how" and not
enough on "why".
I think one of my main problems from the code snippets there is that I can't
figure out which ones are "keywords" and which ones must be defined or
included.
For example, the first real example (5.4):
dependencies {
compile group: 'commons-collections', name: 'commons-collections',
version: '3.2'
testCompile group: 'junit', name: 'junit', version: '4.+'
}
What is compile? And testCompile? They are not explained before.
Actually, testCompile is never explained anywhere and that's the only place
it ever appears in the doc.
Every single code snippet in this documentation contains things like that
and it's extremely frustrating. I want to like Gradle but you really need
to make it much easier for people not interested in diving deep in the
source...
As I said in a previous message, walking through a simple migration guide
from ant would be a great start: pick a standard Java project with sources,
tests, local jar dependencies, external jar dependencies and a packaging
target, and step by step, show how to convert it to Gradle.
--
***Cédric
*
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 1:30 AM, tinca <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> After hours of struggling to get the gradle (groovy) way I must come back
> to
> the start line. What is your advice for a beginner (a long time Java
> programmer), who has little or none knowledge in maven, ivy, groovy, gradle
> - where to start?
> I understand many pieces from what I read and tried till now. It's just
> they
> don't come together. As soon as I need to step beyond what I see in the
> user
> guide I feel lost. For example, in my previous letter a task jar defines
> the
> following:
> from sourceSets.main.classes
> include [path/to/classes]
>
> I got an error which says: cannot find include() method.
> I already know what is sourceSet(s), what is main (I can redefine it for my
> purposes). "classes" makes the first headache. My guess that this refers to
> the set of classes produced by compile task (available under buildDir
> property as defined by project). "from" means a kind of referencing to this
> set and include is the selection/filtering from that set.
> If I do not want to guess what to do? I find SourceSet in the API, this has
> a method getClasses that supports my thinking (but how is it related
> main.classes property(?), I cant see formal correspondence). What is "from"
> and "include", how do I find their description/meaning? Looking at the
> Groovy Reference Card does not seem to help.
>
> Can you advice me where to start with my basic understanding after of what
> I
> can fully enjoy gradle's wonders?
>
> Your help much appreciated!
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://old.nabble.com/where-to-start-for-a-beginner-tp26741219p26741219.html
> Sent from the gradle-user mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
>
> http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
>
>
>
