Install Gradle plugin on Eclipse Luna

This tutorial will show two alternatives to install Gradle plugin on Eclipse Luna and newer versions.

Pre-requisites

• Java Development Kit – click here to follow to tutorial.
• Eclipse Luna – click here to follow to tutorial.

The First Alternative

On your Eclipse menu, go to Help -> Eclipse Marketplace…

On Search… tag, type gradle and press Enter. The search should return many options, but the plugin we want is Gradle IDE Pack, similarly to the image below. Click on Install:

Note: Some users prefer to install another distributions of the plugin (also shown on search result), but, many users couldn’t successfully install the plugin by unavailability errors, therefore, the steps described above appear to have a higher success rate.

The Second Alternative

This alternative is great for those that no matter what they tried, still not able to install the plugin due to the feared The following solutions are not available… error.

• On Eclipse, go to Help -> Install New Software…;
• Click on Add… and fill the form with the following information:
  • Name: Spring
  • Location: http://dist.springsource.com/release/TOOLS/update/e4.4
• Click on OK and wait until the list of resources is loaded;
• Choose the item Core / Eclipse Integration for Gradle -> Gradle IDE and hit the Next button;
• Accept the license agreement and proceed with the installation process until its conclusion. The wizard may also propose to restart Eclipse.

Testing the Plugin

Let’s create a project to test the Gradle plugin we installed.
On your Eclipse, go to File -> New -> Other…

In the opened window, select Gradle Project as shown below:

Next, give a name to the project and select Java Quickstart as our  Sample Project:

After you hit Finish, a project with the similar structure of the image will be created:

To finish the test, right click on your project and select Run As -> Junit Test to run the test automatically created by the wizard. You should see the success result of the test if everything went well:

How to Make it Works on Next Eclipse Releases?

If you are using the first alternative, then all you need is to follow these steps on your new Eclipse version.

But, if you are going to try the second alternative, which you need to know the Spring’s repository URL, follow this link to find the correct update site for you current Eclipse installation. Since we used Eclipse Luna 4.4 for this tutorial, we choose the update site for the version 4.4 of Eclipse on Spring’s page, and so on.

Hope it helps. Cya!