Chapter 3
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The << operator is synonymous with doLast, so we can use it over again in the build
script to add actions to the end of the task. In this example, we create a task called
actionsInOrder. Once this task is created, we can continue to use << to action
actions to the task.
task actionsInOrder << {
println "The first will be first"
}
actionsInOrder << {
println "The last will be last"
}
When we run this script, the actions are executed in the order they are encountered
in the script as follows:
$gradle -q -b scripts/ChapterThree/hello.gradle actionsInOrder
The first will be first
The last will be last
Default tasks
Sometimes, in a build system, we need to define a default task or tasks to execute
whenever the build is run. We define default tasks in a Gradle build script with
the defaultTasks method. For instance, here we have two tasks; clean and
runTests, which we want to run by default whenever the build is executed
without a task specified.
defaultTasks 'clean', 'runTests'
task clean << {
println 'Cleaning'
}
task runTests << {
println 'Running Tests'
}
The preceding Gradle script when run produces the following output:
$gradle -q -b scripts/ChapterThree/default.gradle
Cleaning
Running tests